what empericists believe about abtsract ideas?

Answer 1

Anybody who believe in the value of empirical observation can be said to be an empiricist. For example, most physicists are strong empiricists, in that they believe that any proposed theory of physics must be tested experimentally before being accepted as fact. For this reason, among physicists, even string theory isn't yet a fact, however popular it may be. That is not to say that they reject abstract ideas, but to the contrary. String theory is a highly abstract idea, and a potentially valuable one, once it's proven empirically. Most all notable advances in physical theory first begin as abstract ideas, later buttressed through empirical observations.

Answer 2

Abstraction and empirical activity are in confluence, mind.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slintro.htm#SL8

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slsubjec.htm#SL163n1

"(1) The notion is generally associated in our minds with abstract generality, and on that account it is often described as a general conception. We speak, accordingly, of the notions of colour, plant, animal, etc. They are supposed to be arrived at by neglecting the particular features which distinguish the different colours, plants, and animals from each other, and by retaining those common to them all. This is the aspect of the notion which is familiar to understanding; and feeling is in the right when it stigmatises such hollow and empty notions as mere phantoms and shadows. But the universal of the notion is not a mere sum of features common to several things, confronted by a particular which enjoys an existence of its own. It is, on the contrary, self-particularising or self-specifying, and with undimmed clearness finds itself at home in its antithesis. For the sake both of cognition and of our practical conduct, it is of the utmost importance that the real universal should not be confused with what is merely held in common. All those charges which the devotees of feeling make against thought, and especially against philosophic thought, and the reiterated statement that is dangerous to carry thought to what they call too great lengths, originate in the confusion of these two things.

The universal in its true and comprehensive meaning is a thought which, as we know, cost thousands of years to make it enter into the consciousness of men. The thought did not gain its full recognition till the days of Christianity. The Greeks, in other respects so advanced, knew neither God nor even man in their true universality. The gods of the Greeks were only particular powers of the mind; and the universal God, the God of all nations, was to the Athenians still a God concealed. They believed in the same way that an absolute gulf separated themselves from the barbarians. Man as man was not then recognised to be of infinite worth and to have infinite rights. The question has been asked, why slavery has vanished from modern Europe. One special circumstance after another has been adduced in explanation of this phenomenon. But the real ground why there are no more slaves in Christian Europe is only to be found in the very principle of Christianity itself, the religion of absolute freedom. Only in Christendom is man respected as man, in his infinitude and universality. What the slave is without, is the recognition that he is a person: and the principle of personality is universality. The master looks upon his slave not as a person, but as a selfless thing. The slave is not himself reckoned an ‘I’ — his ‘I’ is his master."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/sl/slsubjec.htm#SL162

"The doctrine of the notion is divided into three parts.

(1) The first is the doctrine of the Subjective or Formal Notion.

(2) The second is the doctrine of the notion invested with the character of immediacy, or of Objectivity.

(3) The third is the doctrine of the Idea, the subject-object, the unity of notion and objectivity, the absolute truth. "


http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/hints.htm#life

"§Life
In Hegel’s system of Logic, Life is the first sub-division of the Idea. Life is included within the domain of Logic by Hegel, because “if absolute truth is the subject matter of logic, and truth as such is essentially in cognition, then cognition at least would have to be discussed”, and he goes on to say that whereas after expounding Logic, other writers branch off into psychology or anthropology, but these, he says, are not the proper subject matter of Logic. Thus, for Hegel Life is a logical category.

Life is the first sub-division of the Idea and is the dialectic of the Living Individual and the Life Process, the synthesis of which is Genus [or Kind]. The negative of Life is Cognition; the unity of Cognition and Life is the Absolute Idea.

It is in the section in the Shorter Logic where Hegel says "A hand when hewn off from the body is a hand in name only, not in fact". See also the section in the Science of Logic and The Living Individual & the Life Process, or the Personal & the Political."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/help/hints.htm#life