0n0w1c

can someone help me with my limited ability to comprehend this idea?

John Page

IMO your imagination is real

owleye

0n0w1c...

I think John has a confused idea of what 'abstract' means and so he chooses some concrete thing, such as one's imagination to be an example of an 'abstract object' being real (ordinarily understood to imply mind-independent). What it is intended to mean, I believe, includes the following attributes:

ideal (immaterial)
unchanging
nonspatial and nontemporal

owleye

Mr. Sammi

Greetings owleye, I think John may have meant the products of the imagination, in one all-encompassing sweeping statement.

I have noted, that you, owleye, have taken abstraction to the further outer limits of definitive jargon. Non-spatial, and non-temporal seems to be the furthest extreme that abstraction can attain.

Contradictory is your idea which overlines ideal, with space and time. I hope for your philosophical sanity the ideal is never filled with a concrete abstraction of an idealism.

All you are saying is your type of abstraction is only a placeholder, it is only the outline, the shadow between content and void.

I would venture the point of pure abstraction as an apriori sentiment. There are no restrictions on these type of abstractions, be it spatial or temporal.

Sammi Na Boodie ()

phaedrus

ABSTRACT OBJECTS ARE REAL - The platonist view of the world rejected by Aristotle. Are numbers real or are concepts like "largeness" exist without any of the human minds thinking about it? Does the "realness" of the abstract object depend on the concrete object which is its manifestation? For example, when one says "Osama Bin Laden", the abstract object/form might be changeless, but the concrete object => the person himself changes. However, until unless bin laden does anything drastically different before he dies, the abstract object/form called Bin laden will continue to "mean" terrorism in our minds. Without any "code" (that would be historical documents) or records, future generations might not recognise this particular abstract object, but it might come into life if someone understands the "language" or "code".

Now a human being has pretty much finite shelf life compared to say mountains or oceans or stars ...etc. So, will the abstract objects which spring out of these so-called real objects (or have been attributed to them)exist forever? Well we havent and maybe will not live that far to check that out I guess our own ephemeral nature results in our imagination or invention of a transcendental or noumenal realm where the existence can be permanent. So what do we do? Just hope that someday everyone realises that universals and particulars are both required for co-existence.

Baaah....did i make any sense?

madmax2976

In order to figure it out, we'd first have to define "real" and "abstract" and "object".

Let's define "real" as something that objectively exists.

How shall we define "abstract"? According to dictionary.com its something "apart from concrete existence".

Object is define by dictionary.com as "something perceptible by one or more of the senses: a material thing".

So it seems to me the question is unintelligible as its posed since "Abstract object" appears to be an oxymoron. So lets take out the word "object" from the question.

It then becomes: Are abstracts real?

If we go back to our definitions, it may be that we still have an unintelligible question - real is something that objectively, and we would suppose, concretely exists as a fact in reality. An abstract is something that by the current definition does not.

It seems we would have to define things in other ways in order to make sense and thus answer the question.

John Page

I think its simpler even than that. Assume the something imagined is a product of the mind (and the imagination process occurs within your brain).

The imagination has occured. The thing that was imaged existed. The question remains whether the thing that was imagined is an accurate representation of something outside the mind.

Yes, I really imagined this.

Cheers, John

excreationist

I think that any thought we can conceive of is composed of experiences we've had while interacting with the physical world. They are just patterns that have been combined.
e.g. there is a pattern where we associate the word "purple" with a certain aspect of our visual experiences. And we also associate this word with other things such as warmth. There is also another pattern where we associate the word "human" with all things to do with humans - their appearance, their movement, and all of their other known properties.
So there are two patterns - purple and human. These could be combined so that there is a subclass of humans that is purple - or a subclass of purple things - which happen to be humans. We can think either way.
Now about an example with a contradiction.
There could be the pattern "circle" which involves a particular sensation within our visual awareness - and a "square". Squares have 4 corners and 4 straight sides and circles have no corners and no straight sides.
These patterns conflict so they can't be combined... but they can partially be combined (we naturally know fuzzy logic) - you could have a squarish circular shape - that might have rounded corners and straightish roundish sides.

I had already experienced those things before - a thing inbetween a corner and no corner - and a thing that was inbetween straight and round... so I didn't pull that out of nowhere.

BTW, I think that all imagination is just a result of goals - e.g. our goal could be to think of an unusual thing for a post, like a purple human. And these are based on our strongest associations. The colours I associate most with "weird" (->unusual) are pink and purple. But pink humans aren't very weird compared to purple ones. I had been thinking of cows and mice earlier. On second thoughts, blue is probably a better colour that is unusual.

Anyway, I'm saying that abstract objects are patterns or clusters of patterns that are based on our experiences with the physical world. And the things we associate with these patterns add a lot of meaning to concepts.

These patterns are encoded into our brains. Without the physical world and our brains and life experiences, they wouldn't exist. I think without anything existing, the idea of quantities (numbers) would be pretty meaningless.

Anyway, abstract things exist in the physical world - encoded as information in your brain. But that doesn't mean that they necessarily exist outside of your brain (e.g. blue humans).

madmax2976:
Well we can treat memories of experienced objects the same as hypothetical objects made up of memory fragments (patterns/features).

[ June 18, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

Ierrellus

'Twas brillig and the slithy toves. . ."

In the college cafeteria, many years ago, a friend and I would, much to the consternation of others at our table, argue thusly:

Friend: If the western cows did not suck honey the world would be a better yellow.
Me: That is only because butterflies cannot play the piano.

If the human "mind" can differentiate between sense and nonsense, is the nonsense concrete or abstract?

Ierrellus

P&gt;V&gt;

John Page

Abstract. And not just human minds - any mind.

Cheers, John