Revisiting Fanon’s classic theory of violence and relying on some of his case studies, this article detects the propensity to see the world in abstract formats as the source of the most malignant forms of revolutionary violence. Based on this, the article explores how abstraction may still be a healthy way of thinking, especially in a globalized and postcolonial world. Two mechanisms for handling abstraction in humane ways are proposed, both of which exclude loyalties to principles or communities so long (...) as those could only be imagined in abstract forms. The two mechanisms of humanizing abstractions proposed here include the capacity to see local stories as manifestations or episodes of universal tales, and the ability to see one’s concrete cause in relationship to a multiplicity of world causes being acted upon in the same forum. (shrink)

Barsalou's move to a perceptual basis for cognition is welcome. His scheme contrasts with classical logical schemes in many ways, including its implications for the status of individuals. Barsalou deals mainly with perceived individuals, omitting discussion of cognized individuals. It is argued that the individuality of cognized individuals is an abstraction, which conforms in its manner of formation to other cognitive abstractions which Barsalou discusses, such as truth and disjunction.

Machamer, Darden, and Craver's account of the nature and role of mechanisms in the special sciences has been very influential. Unfortunately, a confusing array of ontic, epistemic, and pragmatic distinctions is required to individuate their mechanisms, mechanism schemata, and mechanism sketches. I diagnose this as a conflation of token-level causal relations with type-level relations. I propose instead that a mechanism is an abstraction that relates entity types and activity types on the model of a directed graph. Mechanisms have an ontic (...) status distinct from the causal chains of token entities and token activities that instantiate them. (shrink)

According to certain kinds of semantic dispositionalism, what an agent means by her words is grounded by her dispositions to complete simple tasks. This sort of position is often thought to avoid the finitude problem raised by Kripke against simpler forms of dispositionalism. The traditional objection is that, since words possess indefinite (or infinite) extensions, and our dispositions to use words are only finite, those dispositions prove inadequate to serve as ground for what we mean by our words. I argue (...) that, even if such positions (emphasizing simple tasks) avoid the traditional form of Kripke's charge, they still succumb to special cases of the finitude problem. Furthermore, I show how such positions can be augmented so as to avoid even these special cases. Doing so requires qualifying the dispositions of interest as those possessed by the abstracted version of an actual agent (in contrast to, say, an idealized version of the agent). In addition to avoiding the finitude problem in its various forms, the position that results provides new materials for appreciating the role that abstracting models can play for a dispositionalist theory of meaning. (shrink)

Cet article entend questionner la validité de l’essence de l’ ego dégagée dans la Meditatio IIa, s’il est vrai que son rapport aux corps et à Dieu demeure alors encore indéterminé (§ 1). Il apparaît que les corps, loin d’être purement évacués de re, sont seulement suspendus par une abstraction de suspension (§ 2), tandis que le rapport à Dieu doit être pensé sur le mode de l’ abstractio mentis (§ 3). Il convient alors de nourrir le contraste entre ces (...) deux concepts d’abstraction que Descartes n’a pas formellement distingués, notamment par les différents types de clarté qu’elles suscitent (§ 4). Dès lors, la validité de l’essence de l’ ego se trouve précisée par les deux abstractions de la Meditatio IIa puis enrichie dans le cours des Meditationes, lesquelles s’apparentent dès lors à une égologie progressive (§ 5). (shrink)

Granted that there has to be something, the question arises why reality has taken the form it has. The possibilities divide into the physical, the supernatural, the mental, and the abstract. The supernatural has already been ruled out, and it is argued that, while neither the mental nor the abstract is in any way fundamental, if anything at all exists, there must be a physical reality. Some light is thrown on the contentious topic of necessary existence by a consideration of (...) mathematical necessity. (shrink)

Modern computing is generally taken to consist primarily of symbol manipulation. But symbols are abstract, and computers are physical. How can a physical device manipulate abstract symbols? Neither Church nor Turing considered this question. My answer is that the bit, as a hardware-implemented abstract data type, serves as a bridge between materiality and abstraction. Computing also relies on three other primitive—but more straightforward—abstractions: Sequentiality, State, and Transition. These physically-implemented abstractions define the borderline between hardware and software and between (...) physicality and abstraction. At a deeper level, asking how a physical device can interact with abstract symbols is the wrong question. The relationship between symbols and physical devices begins with the realization that human beings already know what it means to manipulate symbols. We build and program computers to do what we understand to be symbol manipulation. To understand what that means, consider a light switch. A light switch doesn’t turn a light on or off. Those are abstractions. Light switches don’t operate with abstractions. We build light switches, so that when flipped, the world is changed in such a way that we understand the light to be on or off. Similarly, we build computers to perform operations that we understand as manipulating symbols. (shrink)

The link between the high-order metaphysics and abstractions, on the one hand, and choice in the foundation of set theory, on the other hand, can distinguish unambiguously the “good” principles of abstraction from the “bad” ones and thus resolve the “bad company problem” as to set theory. Thus it implies correspondingly a more precise definition of the relation between the axiom of choice and “all company” of axioms in set theory concerning directly or indirectly abstraction: the principle of abstraction, (...) axiom of comprehension, axiom scheme of specification, axiom scheme of separation, subset axiom scheme, axiom scheme of replacement, axiom of unrestricted comprehension, axiom of extensionality, etc. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness is explored in the article from conceptual and terminologi­cal perspective. The question of the origins of the ambiguity of the relevant philosophical terms is discussed and relevant examples are given. The basic premise of the study is the as­sertion that abstraction works as a differentiation of differences that characterize and sep­arate kinds of experience. A methodological distinction is made between abstraction and pseudo-abstraction, which can bear the same name, in this case “consciousness”. Termi­nology is interpreted as (...) naming of abstractions of different levels and of realizable expe­riences. The term “consciousness” denotes an element of the ultimate distinction “con­sciousness/objective world”, abstracted from a series of distinctions that characterize the types and levels of experience. Pseudo-abstraction is formed from a series of pre-ex­isting meanings of the word “consciousness” without regard to realizable types of experi­ence as types of distinctions. There are two main alternative trends in the formulation of the problem of consciousness – structural-genetic and phenomenological. The high­lighted tendencies have something in common: the vagueness of the meaning in the use of the word “consciousness” and its functioning as a pseudo-abstraction. The ideological aspect of the problem is also considered. The principle of empiricism is identified with the recognition of the primacy of the diversity of experience as the source of abstraction. An alternative is formulated concerning the problem of the unity of consciousness. Husserl’s argumentation, through which an attempt is made to single out the sphere of consciousness as independent of any type of objectivity and as self-sufficient is analyzed, as well as the way he introduces such terms as “consciousness”, “sensation”, “experi­ence”, “perception” “intentionality”. Husserl’s thought experiment, the purpose of which is to prove the identity of the sensation of color from a real and illusory object, is sub­jected to a detailed analysis. (shrink)

In this important work, Professor Walter M. Elsasser attempts to evaluate the status of one of the most puzzling scientific and philosophic problems of our time: How the basic ideas or categories of biology relate to the fundamental concepts of physics. In particular: "Is biology reducible to physics?" In turn: "Are social and mental phenomena reducible to biology?," as some of the new school of sociobiologists contend.

Molecular biologists use different kinds of reasoning strategies for different tasks, such as hypothesis formation, experimental design, and anomaly resolution. More specifically, the reasoning strategies discussed in this paper may be characterized as (1) abstraction-instantiation, in which an abstract skeletal model is instantiated to produce an experimental system; (2) the systematic scan, in which alternative hypotheses are systematically generated; and (3) modular anomaly resolution, in which components of a model are stated explicitly and methodically changed to generate alternative changes to (...) resolve an anomaly. This work grew out of close observation over a period of six months of an actively functioning molecular genetics laboratory. (shrink)

The body of Rabbinic material that has been relied upon for the view that Pharisaism was legalistic points rather toward confidence in God's grace and toward obedience as one's appropriate response.

This brief commentary on Yoni Van Den Eede’s rumination, “Concrete/,” explores residual conceptual ambiguities and raises questions about information technologies and the felt sense of primacy regarding selves and communities.

The distribution of the flap allophone [ɾ] of American English, along with the other allophones of /t/,[t h,t =, ʔ, t] has been accounted for in various formal frameworks by assuming a number of different abstract mechanisms and entities. The desirability or usefulness of these formalisms is not at issue in the present paper. Instead, a computationally explicit model of categorization is used (Skousen 1989, 1992) in order to account for the distribution of the allophones of /t/ without recourse to (...) such formalisms. The simulations that were carried out suggest that they are not needed because analogy to surface apparent variables such as phones and word boundaries is sufficient to predict allophony. In analogy, the particular allophone of /t/ (i.e. [ɾ, t h, t =, ʔ, t]) that appears in a given context is determined on the basis of similarity to stored exemplars in the mental lexicon. From an acquisitional standpoint, categorization by analogy to stored exemplars dispenses with the need for rule induction although it does suggest that speakers group functionally related sounds into mental categories, a process that is influenced to a great deal by orthography. Analogy also explains the stochastic nature of linguistic performance. In the present study, 3,719 tokens of the allophones of the phoneme /t/ were extracted from the TIMIT corpus and constitute the database from which analogs were chosen. The variables used included the three phones or boundaries on either side of /t/, and the stress of the syllables preceding and following /t/. The model proves quite successful in predicting the correct allophone, and the errors made are generally possible alternative pronunciations (e.g. moun[ʔ]ain, moun[t h ]ain). The success rate changes little when only small sub-samples of the database are incorporated. In addition, exemplar-modeling is found to be quite robust because even when a feature such as stress is eliminated, (a feature which is critical in most rule approaches), allophony is still highly predictable. (shrink)