III.12              Grasping Abstract Concepts
   To avoid being deceived, bamboozled, flimflammed, or humbugged,
   One must understand concepts from the concrete to the abstract.

A. Rising Levels of Abstraction
B. Why Abstractions Are Important
C. What is a Concept?
D. Instructive Definitions
E. Fallacies of Reification
F. Fallacy of Remaining in the Realm of the Abstract
       
A.                           Rising Levels of Abstraction
For instance, to understand with clarity the proposition "Every individual is subsumed by ever larger social and physical entities" requires that we ascend the ladder of abstraction. We start with the concrete individual and climb to the largest known reality there is, the universe. As we go up, it can be manifestly observed that the groups get increasingly abstract, that is, they include more members, but more and more defining properties of its members are being separated out. So, increased abstractions come with less meaning or precision of the parts that it includes.
Note: Each higher level subsumes all the lower levels.
B.                     Why Abstractions Are Important
To understand the world and to bring some order into the chaos of human impressions one needs concepts and abstractions; one disregards what in some particular context is less relevant.
                                    Walter A. Kaufmann (1921-80)
a. To communicate and learn effectively
Effective learning and communication requires writing and reading as well as speaking and listening. Here, the correct use of language is our most powerful instrument. Language necessarily involves forming abstractions. They are unavoidable because with them it is possible to reason directly about properties that hold in general; while without abstractions, thought would be limited to the concrete specific or particular.
Hence, it is essential that we know when and how to apply, as well as understand the difference between, the concrete and the abstract and the specific and the general. Chances are that if we remain in the abstract and general, our writing will be obscure and tedious because the reader cannot connect to the gist and info we are trying to convey. On the other hand, if we remain in the concrete and specific, the reader may get lost in details and not get the overall point we are trying to make.
Therefore, it is essential to know when to climb the ladder of abstraction to encapsulate the general and when to descent to make things clear and interesting by connecting them with the concrete and specific.
Writers who have learned to make their meanings clear constantly vary their levels of abstraction, using higher level abstractions to give their statements a broad scope and lower levels to illustrate the broad assertions in action.
                                                                               W. Ward Fearnside
b. Not to be deceived by exalted abstractions
For both, honest and less honest thinkers, the process of abstraction brings with it the temptation to lose touch with the concrete, not so perfect real world, and create a utopian perfect world for the here and now or even an other-worldly wish world. This occurs when the thinker ignores reality or disconnects from it while climbing the staircase from the down-to-earth concrete to the lofty heights of abstraction.
Moreover, this is harmful when it leads to euphemistic abstractions that diminish substantially the impact of horrendous conditions. For example, the abstraction collateral damage hides the fact that it refers to the corpses of a few hundred thousand civilians. Or to state that some people in the third world live in unsanitary conditions when they literally live in shit and piss. 
c. To examine pernicious reifications of abstractions
An abstraction is reified when it is treated as if it had existence and sometimes as if it were a concrete, objectively verifiable thing (see below). This is fallacious, but entire systems of philosophy, politics, religion, pseudo science, and social theories have been built on or have been supported by this error in reasoning. These insidious constructs are still with us, being taught and maintained by being ignored. An observer from the Foundation for Critical Thinking points out:
Unfortunately, in philosophy [religion] and the social sciences, most instructors play it safe and remain in the realm of the abstract. Students will thus not acquire the content or logic of the abstraction. The often unjust status quo is thus maintained and the college or university fails one of its fundamental functions, namely, to act as a catalyst for progressive social change.
 
C.                                  What is a Concept?
When a symbol stands for a class of objects or events with common properties, it is called a concept. More broadly speaking, a concept is that which one has when one understands or is able to use a part of one's native tongue. This ability may be feeble and limited to simply distinguishing between objects. For example, a child may make a sound like "wow-wow," or say doggie, in the presents of a dog. A stronger grasp of the concept dog would be the ability to define that which makes a dog a dog, its essence. And the concept "mammal" is more general than the concept "dog" since it includes it and many more animal species. 
     More specific, a concept or predicate is that which is understood when we use their labels known as terms. To understand a concept is to have its information content sufficiently comprehended. This competence is demonstrated when the corresponding term is correctly
  1. Used for making judgments,
  2. Recognized when it applies, and
  3. Understood concerning the consequences of its application.
     All persons have slightly different concepts related to a given word. The farer away a concept is from sense information, the more the concept varies between persons, and should be defined very carefully. For instance the term "reality" is for the philosophy of "realism" the factual out there as perceived by the senses and independent of the mind. For "idealism" things exist only as ideas in the mind rather than as material objects independent of the mind.     
     Concepts are stored in the semantic memory of the brain. They are the basic elements of thought and form an interrelated web. Part of this web are up and down links for most concepts. They link up to those higher level concepts, higher abstractions, of which they themselves are parts, but they also link down to their own parts which in turn can have parts and then are lower abstractions. For example, a car links up to means of transportation, it links down to its parts, wheels etc., and these parts then may link to their own parts as in the case of wheel to rim, spokes, tire.
 
D.                             Instructive Definitions 
Terms (words, labels). A term labels (names, designates) concepts and predicates (see below). It is important to know that terms, words, and labels in general are arbitrary, that is, they have no meaning apart from a form of application in which they have a use. Their true meaning is therefore the particular way they are used in an activity or practice. And if we know the language, and keep in mind that some words have multiple meanings, then we will use the word correctly.
     A common error in communicating arises from assuming that the term (word, label), e.g., knowledge, truth, normal, God, is the object rather than the information content of its concept. Unless the speaker and the one who is spoken to have the same concept or meaning of terms being used, they will talk past each other and not settle the argument because the term means something different to each of them.
     Terms (words, labels) have different values for communication because they differ in their level of abstraction (see below).   
 
Abstract terms label abstract concepts which are the product of the process of abstracting. They refer to words or concepts thought of as apart from any particular instances such as concrete objects or applications. Abstractness exists only in thinking or language, but not in reality. Abstract terms and the concepts they name permit the structuralizing of reality, for example, classifying an object, that is, making it a member of a class.
     Examples of abstract terms are: love, hate, good, bad, beauty, ugly, freedom, bondage, virtue, vice, democracy, and the many "-ism": conservatism, socialism, sexism, feminism, racism, classism, theism, atheism, naturalism.
Abstraction. An abstraction is a concept or predicate word which defines the phenomena that make up its referents, that is, those concrete objects, events or application to which the abstraction refers. It lacks properties that exist in space and time, but is supposed to exist in some form of being. Here are some examples:
     In trigonometry, the abstract triangle has only the properties common to all triangles. It does not have the particular properties associated with concretely existing triangle such as a definite size, angle, or color.
     The world's largest, organized religion is Christianity. This is, however, an abstract concept because it has no existence apart from the concretely existing of about 30,000 distinct and separately organized churches.   
     Fruit is a useful abstraction because, for instance, it allows us to add apples and oranges. But still there is no such thing as fruit apart form particular apples, oranges, bananas, etc.
Abstracting is the process wherein ideas are distanced from objects. In other words, it is the action of divorcing properties of physical objects from the objects themselves or as in the case divorcing the objects completely. With other words, the information content of a concept is reduced which results in a reduction of its complexity. It necessarily occurs in the ranges of both, from the specific to the general and from the concrete to the abstract.
Instantiating is the reverse process of abstracting. Here we descend on the ladder of abstractions to instances that were part of an earlier abstracting.
Abolition of Error demands that somehow abstract terms and concepts be connected with what is observable directly or indirectly with instruments. For they make sense only with reference to concrete contexts of application.
Concrete terms versus abstract terms
Although connected because each one leads to the other, they are radically different opposites:
Concrete terms refer to concepts that have a material and perceptible existence. That is, they belongs to, or are characterized by things or events that can be perceived by the senses. Examples are: table, chair, knife, pot, car, water, air, hot, cold, singing, walking.
Abstract terms, as we have seen above with examples, refer to concepts that do not refer to physical things such as objects or events; hence, they are not available to the senses.
Specific and general terms
Are not opposites as abstract and concrete terms are. Rather, they are located at opposite ends of a range of terms or concepts with space for intermediates.
Specific terms refer to individuals (my dog)
General terms refer to groups (all mammals)
Here, an intermediate term would be all dogs.
     As we have seen, and more broadly speaking, a specific term refers to a particular and distinct individual, fact, item, process, or instance. Moreover, all these particulars may be included under generalizations.
     The meaning of general in general term implies applicability to all, nearly all, or most of a group. Words with nearly the same or more inclusive meaning as general are: universal, all-embracing, comprehensive, all-inclusive, overall, across-the-board, global, catholic, and ecumenical.
Personification (anthropomorphization) occurs when abstractions are referred to in terms that apply to human beings and when human activities and intentions are attributed to them.
Predicate.
A sentence expresses a complete thought and consists of at least a subject and a predicate. In the sentence "Max sleeps," for example, the predicate "sleeps" tells what the subject is doing, and that may be true or false.  
Reification (to reify) (trans. thingification from the Latin res thing and facere to make)
This fallacy occurs:
  • When an abstraction is treated as if it had existence and sometimes as if it were a concrete, objectively verifiable thing.
  • When an abstraction is believed to be the cause of producing or capable of producing desired effects or intended outcomes.
  • When an abstraction is believed to exist prior to the things they refer to.
  • When an abstraction that lacks referents is explained by even a higher abstraction claimed to have some form of existence. In other words, the obscure is explained with the even more obscure.
Here, the term reification is applied to all kinds of abstractions. However, some also apply terms like hypostatization and concretization depending on the kind of abstraction. Also, reification is different from objectification (see below).
Note: The process of treating abstractions as if it had existence is not fallacious when the context makes it clear that it is done for metaphorical, poetical, or fictional purposes. For example as made clear in a biology text, "In reality, the noun "life" is merely a reification of the process of living. It does not exist as an independent entity.
Objectification is the process of turning subjective, produced by the mind, entities into objects, that is, make them objective, concrete, externalized. Some writers use this term also in place of reification for abstract entities.
 
E.                                Fallacies of Reification
                              Treating Abstractions as if They were Real
These fallacies always involve ascribing substance or real existence to abstractions that are merely mental constructs or concepts. In addition, a reified abstraction may be a term with normal usage that is then invalidly used.
The fallacy of the reification of the zero
The theologian Martin Heidegger, after discovering that rain rains, came up with the idea that the nothing nothings or the nothing nihilates (German, Das Nichts nichted). Nothing appears as if it were an object doing something. Now that the nothing is something we may use it in an argument (grin):
1. A peanut-butter sandwich is better than nothing.
2. Nothing is better than an education                 
Conclusion: A peanut-butter sandwich is better than an education
 
Miscellaneous Fallacies
a. Famous Politician: "And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you--ask what you can do for your country." A country is not a person that can be asked, people ask. Behind this oratory is the harmful concept that citizens exist for the sake of their country. Precisely the opposite is the spirit and declared intention of the U.S. Constitution, namely, that the country or government exists for the sake of its citizens.
b. A like fallacy is today's (June 14, 2007) statement by Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Guiliani: "Globalization is good for the country."  This is a most insidious rhetoric, and Rudi is either ignorant or vicious or both. Globalization is thought of mainly as trade between countries, and where each country benefits because each trades with what it is doing best. However, and this is crucial, the trade is between individual players in these countries. It is they who benefit while the many may even suffer considerable losses. For example, if Microsoft sells $100 billion (one billion is 1,000 million) of software to China, and China sells a $100 billion manufactured goods to the United States, then Microsoft benefits enormously while for each billion in imported manufactured goods about 14,000 jobs are being lost. In this instance that will be 1,400,000 manufacturing jobs lost.
c. "Good and evil are opposing forces that rule human behavior." The concept of good and evil are qualities that have no motivation to act one way or another.
d. "The judgment of history is . . . ." It is people that make judgments not history.
e. "Religion has made progress . . . ." It is people that make progress not religion.
Other fallacies of abstractions are: Democracy calls. Duty tells us. . . Justice demands that we . . . God wants you to . . .
 
F.             Fallacy of Remaining in the Realm of the Abstract
                Excerpt from Hegel's Who Thinks Abstractly? (Written ca. 1808)
                                Translated by W. A. Kaufmann (1921-80)
 
. . . . Who thinks abstractly? The uneducated, not the educated. Good society does not think abstractly because it is too easy, because it is too lowly (not referring to the external status) -- not from an empty affectation of nobility that would place itself above that of which it is not capable, but on account of the inward inferiority of the matter.
     The prejudice and respect for abstract thinking are so great that sensitive nostrils will begin to smell some satire or irony at this point; but since they read the morning paper they know that there is a prize to be had for satires and that I should therefore sooner earn it by competing for it than give up here without further ado.
     I have only to adduce examples for my proposition: everybody will grant that they confirm it. A murderer is led to the place of execution. For the common populace he is nothing but a murderer. Ladies perhaps remark that he is a strong, handsome, interesting man. The populace finds this remark terrible: What? A murderer handsome? How can one think so wickedly and call a murderer handsome; no doubt, you yourselves are something not much better! This is the corruption of morals that is prevalent in the upper classes, a priest may add, knowing the bottom of things and human hearts.
     One who knows men traces the development of the criminal's mind: he finds in his history, in his education, a bad family relationship between his father and mother, some tremendous harshness after this human being had done some minor wrong, so he became embittered against the social order -- a first reaction to this that in effect expelled him and henceforth did not make it possible for him to preserve himself except through crime. -- There may be people who will say when they hear such things: he wants to excuse this murderer! After all I remember how in my youth I heard a mayor lament that writers of books were going too far and sought to extirpate Christianity and righteousness altogether; somebody had written a defense of suicide; terrible, really too terrible! -- Further questions revealed that The Sufferings of Werther [by Goethe, 1774] were meant.
     This is abstract thinking: to see nothing in the murderer except the abstract fact that he is a murderer, and to annul all other human essence in him with this simple quality. . . .