HKB
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Often appears with: reason and the intellect · language, naming, and meaning · doubt, skepticism, and certainty · perception and the senses · workmanship of the understanding · words as signs · unknown constitution · time and duration · spirit and ideas · space time infinity · sources of error · sorts and species
Usually: argument (10) · skepticism (6) · censure (3) · detachment (2) · exhortation (2) · reflection (1) · crisis of belief (1) · indignation (1)
“As I look upon this to be one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters, I shall here endeavour to confirm it by some arguments, which I hope will put it beyond all doubt and controversy.” David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature · wit
“To conclude. This is that which in short I would say, viz. that all the great business of GENERA and SPECIES, and their ESSENCES, amounts to no more but this:--That men making abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds with names annexed to them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and discourse of them, as it were in bundles” John Locke, An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2 · insight
Locke argues that even the most abstract ideas come from repeating and joining ideas originally obtained from sensation or reflection, and he plans to illustrate this with space, time, and infinity.
6. Ideas of Substances, single or collective. Secondly, the ideas of SUBSTANCES are such combinations of simple ideas as are taken to represent distinct PARTICULAR things subsisting by themselves; in which the supposed or confused idea of substance, such as it is, is always the first and chief. Thus if to substance be joined the simple idea of a certain dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, …
Locke claims that general natures are just abstract and partial ideas of more complex ones, and that the whole school doctrine of genera and species is merely such abstract ideas with names attached.
10. Why the Genus is ordinarily made Use of in Definitions. This may show us the reason why, in the defining of words, which is nothing but declaring their signification, we make use of the GENUS, or next general word that comprehends it. Which is not out of necessity, but only to save the labour of enumerating the several simple ideas which the next general word or GENUS stands for; or, perhaps, sometimes the shame…
Locke argues that general terms signify kinds of things by pointing to abstract ideas in the mind, which function as the essences of genera and species and are made by understanding.
12. Abstract Ideas are the Essences of Genera and Species. The next thing therefore to be considered is, What kind of signification it is that general words have. For, as it is evident that they do not signify barely one particular thing; for then they would not be general terms, but proper names, so, on the other side, it is as evident they do not signify a plurality; for MAN and MEN would then signify the same; an…
Locke argues that talk of real essences as species-distinguishers is useless, since imagined unknown constitutions cannot help knowledge compared with abstract ideas and general names.
19. Essences ingenerable and incorruptible. That such abstract ideas, with names to them, as we have been speaking of are essences, may further appear by what we are told concerning essences, viz. that they are all ingenerable and incorruptible. Which cannot be true of the real constitutions of things, which begin and perish with them. All things that exist, besides their Author, are all liable to change; especially…
Locke argues that common names for substances function as labels for “sorts,” formed from collections of complex ideas shared by particular things, and that these sorts depend on human abstraction rather than real natures.
OF THE NAMES OF SUBSTANCES. 1. The common Names of Substances stand for Sorts. The common names of substances, as well as other general terms, stand for SORTS: which is nothing else but the being made signs of such complex ideas wherein several particular substances do or might agree, by virtue of which they are capable of being comprehended in one common conception, and signified by one name. I say do or might agr…
Hume defends the view that abstract general ideas are based on particular ideas tied to words, arguing that the mind cannot conceive quantity or quality without definite degrees, so abstract ideas still contain determinate properties.
SECT. VII. OF ABSTRACT IDEAS. A very material question has been started concerning ABSTRACT or GENERAL ideas, WHETHER THEY BE GENERAL OR PARTICULAR IN THE MIND'S CONCEPTION OF THEM. A great philosopher [3] has disputed the received opinion in this particular, and has asserted, that all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes…
Socrates contrasts philosophy with opinion by claiming abstract ideas like justice, beauty, good, and evil are grasped by knowledge, while sense impressions belong to opinion and produce a dreamlike, unstable view.
their ears to every chorus at the Dionysiac festivals, to be called philosophers?’ They are not true philosophers, but only an imitation. ‘Then how are we to describe the true?’ You would acknowledge the existence of abstract ideas, such as justice, beauty, good, evil, which are severally one, yet in their various combinations appear to be many. Those who recognize these realities are philosophers; whereas the other…
Berkeley explains how philosophers say abstraction works, giving examples of separating extension, colour, and motion, and then forming generalized ideas like extension-in-general or colour-in-general.
from any darkness and intricacy in the objects, or natural defect in the understanding, so much as from false Principles which have been insisted on, and might have been avoided. 5. How difficult and discouraging soever this attempt may seem, when I consider how many great and extraordinary men have gone before me in the like designs, yet I am not without some hopes--upon the consideration that the largest views are…
Berkeley insists that defining matter as an inert, non-entity is merely redefining “nothing,” and that an abstract idea of existence independent of spirit and ideas is incoherent.
may say there is an inert thoughtless substance without accidents which is the occasion of our ideas. And we shall understand just as much by one proposition as the other. 80. In the last place, you will say, what if we give up the cause of material Substance, and stand to it that Matter is an unknown somewhat--neither substance nor accident, spirit nor idea, inert, thoughtless, indivisible, immovable, unextended, e…
He claims expelling matter removes many skeptical and irreligious disputes, then turns to abstract ideas, using time and extension to argue abstraction creates confusion.
that only fortress, without which your Epicureans, Hobbists, and the like, have not even the shadow of a pretence, but become the most cheap and easy triumph in the world. 94. OF IDOLATORS.--The existence of Matter, or bodies unperceived, has not only been the main support of Atheists and Fatalists, but on the same principle doth Idolatry likewise in all its various forms depend. Did men but consider that the sun, m…
Turning to mathematics, Berkeley argues its certainty can hide mistaken general principles derived from abstract ideas and objects existing without the mind, and he urges studying numbers and geometry as subordinate to practice.
distinct multitudes of things whereof one is taken for an unit), we may be able rightly to sum up, divide, and proportion the things themselves that we intend to number. 122. In Arithmetic, therefore, we regard not the things, but the signs, which nevertheless are not regarded for their own sake, but because they direct us how to act with relation to things, and dispose rightly of them. Now, agreeably to what we hav…