Abstraction Used in Philosophy
Abstraction in philosophy is the process (or, to some, the alleged process) in concept-formation of recognizing some set of common features in individuals, and on that basis forming a concept of that feature. The notion of abstraction is important to understanding some philosophical controversies surrounding empiricism and the problem of universals. It has also recently become popular in formal logic under predicate abstraction. Another philosophical tool for discussion of abstraction is thought space.
Read more about this topic: Abstraction
Famous quotes containing the words abstraction and/or philosophy:
“There’s no such thing as socialism pure
Except as an abstraction of the mind.
There’s only democratic socialism,
Monarchic socialism, oligarchic
The last being what they seem to have in Russia.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.”
—Frantz Fanon (1925–1961)