Abstraction
Our perceptual system delivers a lot of information to our brain and we have to be able to simplify this so we can processes it with the resources we have. We use our ability to abstract to be able to do this.
Neuroscientists discuss what they term a "neural abstraction pyramid". Search on this phrase and you will get many hits. This neural abstraction underwrites the abstraction we experience in consciousness.
When we look at an object our visual system gathers information which our brain uses to create the form that appears in our conscious world and we become in-formed of the object. This form will be less detailed than the material object it represents because our perceptual systems have limits. Once we have that form in consciousness, we can reduce its complexity further by removing details to create an abstracted form. As we remove details from the forms we perceive they become more similar to each other.
We can think of ourselves as starting with detailed forms and abstracting away details until we are left with a blank form. We can then associate this blank form with a word, for example, "tree". We can then use the word 'tree' to refer to anything that con-forms to the form 'tree'.
When we look at an object our visual system gathers information which our brain uses to create the form that appears in our conscious world and we become in-formed of the object. This form will be less detailed than the material object it represents because our perceptual systems have limits. Once we have that form in consciousness, we can reduce its complexity further by removing details to create an abstracted form. As we remove details from the forms we perceive they become more similar to each other.
We can think of ourselves as starting with detailed forms and abstracting away details until we are left with a blank form. We can then associate this blank form with a word, for example, "tree". We can then use the word 'tree' to refer to anything that con-forms to the form 'tree'.
As we repeat this process we develop a vocabulary in which words like 'man', 'car', dog', etc. refer to abstracted forms that can represent any form that conforms to it. We then use these words to construct sentences such as, 'the man put his dog in the car'. To me more specific we fill in some of the details, e.g. 'the old man put his brown dog in the taxi'.
When we use words to communicate we are operating at a level of abstraction that is convenient for what we want to say. We can shift the level of abstraction and provide details by using more words, or we can become more vague, e.g. 'someone put an animal in the vehicle'.
When we use words to communicate we are operating at a level of abstraction that is convenient for what we want to say. We can shift the level of abstraction and provide details by using more words, or we can become more vague, e.g. 'someone put an animal in the vehicle'.
This theory only works if we have forms in consciousness that can be abstracted. These forms are provided by representational perception (RP), but direct perception (DP) assumes that they do not exist. When DP proponents reject representational forms they have no way of linking words to what happens in our mind and to the environment. Instead they assume that such links are not needed.
Abstraction allows simple forms to represent more complicated forms and facilitates the creation of scientific theory and philosophical theory. We can think of ourselves as information processors and draw connections between the way we think and what we program computers to do.
Abstraction is a powerful concept and I will return to it as
needed when discussing other aspects of Representational Systems.
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