Abstractionism is the

theory A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may ...

that the

mind The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for vario ...

obtains some or all of its

concept Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by s ...

s by abstracting them from concepts it already has, or from

experience Experience refers to conscious events in general, more specifically to perceptions, or to the practical knowledge and familiarity that is produced by these conscious processes. Understood as a conscious event in the widest sense, experience invol ...

.Geach, Peter (1957) Mental Acts - Their Contents and Their Objects. Routledge Kegan Paul. One may, for example, abstract 'green' from a set of experiences which involve green along with other

properties Property is the ownership of land, resources, improvements or other tangible objects, or intellectual property. Property may also refer to: Mathematics * Property (mathematics) Philosophy and science * Property (philosophy), in philosophy an ...

. Also, for example, one may abstract a generic concept like 'vegetable' from the already possessed concepts of its instances (carrot, broccoli, onion, etc.) This view was criticized by

George Berkeley George Berkeley (; 12 March 168514 January 1753) – known as Bishop Berkeley ( Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) – was an Anglo-Irish philosopher whose primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called "immate ...

and

Peter Geach Peter Thomas Geach (29 March 1916 – 21 December 2013) was a British philosopher who was Professor of Logic at the University of Leeds. His areas of interest were philosophical logic, ethics, history of philosophy, philosophy of religion and t ...

Development

Abstractionism has its roots in

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical Greece, Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatet ...

's writings, particularly those rejecting the Platonic

theory of Forms The theory of Forms or theory of Ideas is a philosophical theory, fuzzy concept, or world-view, attributed to Plato, that the physical world is not as real or true as timeless, absolute, unchangeable ideas. According to this theory, ideas in t ...

. They were adopted and developed further by the

Scholastics Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translat ...

so that the doctrine became entrenched in the seventeenth century. John Locke also developed his own theory of abstract ideas although it was against the Scholastic theory of essences. For him, ideas originate through the senses and the materials or the sensory data provided by these become the basis of the way we form general ideas of classes of things. His theory contradicts the empiricist standpoint due to its focus on intuitive and demonstrative knowledge as demonstrated in Locke's recognition that pure mathematics and pure morals are founded on intuition and demonstration. There are several modern versions of abstractionism and these include those developed by theorists such as

Noam Chomsky Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...

and

Jerry Fodor Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the mo ...

, who proposed that concepts are preformed at birth and that we learn to match the words of our language onto the pre-existing concepts. Chomsky, for instance, explained the "deep structure" of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a ''internetworking, network of networks'' that consists ...

or the grammar of meaning hidden beneath the surface of words by citing that "linguists isolate from an essentially heterogeneous linguistic reality a standard and homogeneous system, thus grounding abstraction." Berkeley's opposition to abstractionism is considered to be primarily directed at Locke's claim that words are made general through the mediation of general ideas. This is due to the view that Locke's argument is tantamount to claiming that the word "triangle" can be applied to many different triangles because the abstract general idea of the form is used as a template or standard when identifying new instances as being of the same sort.

References

Abstraction Theory of mind {{philo-stub