What are your views, on the limits of abstraction?

Question

By abstraction I mean the human capacity for generalization and association. It's one of our most powerful mental tools, and it's use can lead to more "fundamental truths."

At some point though, the loss of accuracy must outweigh any additional benefit. A white canvas in theory reflects every color from every pixel and thus reflects every picture that can ever be, but as art, it has no value at all.

How does one recognize that threshold where further abstraction is unproductive?

Typhoon: Could you expand on that a bit? I'll set aside that Spinoza was a determinist who rejected the notion of free-will. Spinoza's concept of adequate ideas is clear enough. I'm a bit less comforable with the notion that any idea that follows from an adequate idea is itself adequate. This would then necessarily encompass intuitive knowledge, at the top of his hierarchy.

Answer 1

I believe abstraction is unproductive when it has reached into theories that can not be confirmed and has sound evidence that strongly refutes the ideas in question.

In essences, if our mental tools are to be powerful they must bring forth truth.

What good is a "fundamental truth" that leads people into confusion given that it is truly a lie? How does deception serve the greater good in any arena of life?

If a though or string of thoughts sounds right to us and we become pleased with our intellect since we are so astounded by it we should at least confirm our source of pride to be true. Least we truly be a fool or the emperor in no clothes.



Bruce,

Will you please better explain this statement?

“It is content that decreases as abstraction increases, and it is breadth of applicability that increases with abstraction.”

I do not see how the substance of a matter decreasing can increase its application.

When you divert from the origin and bridge into other concepts you have failed to gain the answer needed to continue your journey. Thus, your mind is in a continual cycle of questions without resolutions.

How is that productive?

How can you correctly apply solutions to an affair that you have bypassed all answers to?

In my opinion at that point abstraction just becomes another word for confusion and last time I checked confusion has some very unproductive and stressful properties.

Answer 2

There is no level at which abstraction is unproductive - even the most abstract concepts have at least potential application.

Color alone cannot a picture make. Every language (and art is a language) has three aspects: content, form, and context.

It is content that decreases as abstraction increases, and it is breadth of applicability that increases with abstraction.

As abstraction proceeds, content diminishes first, then form. Ultimately, all that is left is context.

The most abstract concepts are mathematical concepts. They are the context of everything - applicable to everything.

The 'ladder of abstraction' goes something like this:

- sensations
- somatic skills (practical knowledge of one's body)
- perceptions (perceptual knowledge)
- concepts (bringing perceptions 'under' concepts, into categories)
- propositions (knowledge 'that', as distinct from 'how' and 'of')
- reason and imagination
- religion
- philosophy
- science and technology
-mathematics

Answer 3

Agreed with Brucebirdfield that no level of abstraction is completely unproductive. Without exploring abstraction in it's infinite depths and variations we can never know alternatives to the status quo. Everything starts with an abstraction (potential), therefore no abstraction can be deemed unproductive.

Answer 4

Well, I consider that after human definition and acceptance of space and time, we have been led to some problematic situation! I "see" no difference between a subatomic particle and Andromeda!
Thus, abstracting is mainly parallel to our knowledge and "intuition"!

Answer 5

I think it's really positive.

Xan Shui,
Philosophic Philanthropist, Honest Man

Answer 6

Spinoza ?