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ESKO MARJOMAA

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN
CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES


ASPECTS OF RELEVANCE IN INFORMATION MODELLING, PP. 90-96





ESKO MARJOMAA

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT ENTITIES
ASPECTS OF RELEVANCE IN INFORMATION MODELLING, PP. 90-96


Introduction

The difference between concrete and abstract entities can be expressed with the following two characterizations

C1 A concrete entity is an actually sensed particular occupant of a spatio-temporal location; and

C2 An abstract entity is an entity, which is not concrete.

There are, of course, also many other ways to state the abstract/concrete distinction. For example, Hale (1988: 86-87) has gathered the following characterizations which are not equivalent to each other (nor with C1 and C2, above):

(1) Abstract entities are not in spacetime whereas concrete entities are;

(2) Abstract entities cannot participate in causal networks but concrete entities can;

(3) Abstract entities have only relational properties while concrete entities have some intrinsic properties;

(4) Abstract entities are universals and concrete entities are particulars;

(5) Abstract entities are sets and concrete entities are individuals;

(6) Abstract entities are never indiscernible from one another whereas concrete entities (sometimes) are;

(7) Abstract entities are human constructions or creations, whereas concrete entities exist independently of human minds or language;

(8) Abstract entities are types and concrete entities are tokens;

(9) Negative terms apply, but positive ones do not, to abstract entities;

(10) Concrete entities are known by observation whereas abstract entities are known in some other way, e. g., by abstraction, by intuition, a priori;

(11) Concrete entities "can be pinned down by pointing" but abstract entities cannot be ostended;

(12) An individual is concrete if and only if it is exhaustively divisible into concreta, i. e. into fully determinate parts, and an individual is abstract if and only if it contains no concretum.

We can add here also the following one:

(13) All concrete entities have in common the characteristic "existend", but it is quite questionable whether there is any characteristic which all abstracts have in common.

Strictly speaking, all these "definitions" are imperfect (including C1 and C2 above, but perhaps not (13)) in the sense that being a concrete (or abstract) entity always involves an agent: An entity can be concrete for an agent A only if it is actually sensed by A.

Hale (1988: 85) gives us three conditions for the legitimate epistemological use of the abstract/concrete distinction: 1) Clarity Condition: it can be clearly drawn; 2) Ontological Significance Condition: it can be shown to divide our ontology into two fundamentally different kinds; and 3) Epistemological Significance Condition: it can be shown to have some epistemological significance.

These conditions are not very easy to fulfil, but I think that on the basis of C1 and C2 this difficulty would vanish. This, however, requires that we are able to define "abstractness" using positive terms. And one way to solve this latter "definitional" problem is first to try to define the degree of abstractness. But this is not any easy task, because of two main reasons:

(1) There are many different characteristics of abstract entities - such as connectivity, bootstrapness, epistemological depth, relationality, relativity, ontological rank, complexity, generality, degree of quantification (i. e. the logical type of the entity), etc. - in respect to how they differ from concrete objects and maybe also from each other.

(2) There are many different ways to give weights to different characteristics of abstract entities.

We can also characterize the difference between concrete and (highly) abstract entities by saying that the extension of an (highly) abstract term is not very easy to determine, while the extension of a concrete term is generally easier to determine. Strictly speaking, it is not correct to use the expressions "abstract term" and "concrete term", because the terms do not usually differ in degree of abstractness, but the extensions of the concepts connoted by the terms. So, it is better to speak about "concrete" and "abstract extensions" of the concepts connoted by "singular" and "general terms", respectively. However, for the sake of familiarity, we shall use the short expressions, viz., "abstract terms", "abstract names", etc.

According to Quine (1963b: 75), "the ostensions which introduce a general term differ from those which introduce a singular term in that the former do not impute identity of indicated object between occasions of pointing." And, he continues, "the general term does not, or need not, purport to be a name in turn of a separate entity of any sort, whereas the singular term does." In other words, "a singular term names or purports to name just one object, though as complex or diffuse an object as you please, while a general term is true of each, severally, of any number of objects".

According to Griffin (1977:22-23), it is necessary to be able to mark general nouns as distinct from the predicates in which they occur. It is also necessary to be able to distinguish sortal general nouns (e. g. "dog", "car", "unicorn", "cup") from mass terms (e. g. "water", "sugar", "bread", "phlogiston"). So, Griffin (1977: 23) draws a distinction between two kinds of general terms, +count and -count general terms:

A general term "T" is +count if "There are n Ts..." makes sense, where "n" is a variable taking numerals

as values; otherwise "T" is -count.

while all +count general terms are general nouns some -count general terms are also general nouns. Intuitively (see Griffin 1977:25), -count nouns seem to fall into at least three distinct groups. (1) Names of materials (e. g. "gold", "water", "iron") and terms that behave in exactly the same way (e. g. "meat", "wheat", "garbage"). (2) Similarly behaving abstract terms (e. g. "music", "cricket", "mathematics", "information", "entertainment", "redness"). (3) Characterizing terms (e. g. "intelligence", "chastity", "indigence", "quality", "viscosity", "efficiency" - typically abstract names of qualities).

Because general terms refer to abstract entities (at least in the sense of C1 and C2, above), it is important to have a look at the problem whether it is possible to define the degree of abstractness (hereafter the DoA) of a selected entity.

Quine (1960: 90-1). See also Griffin (1977: 22).

That it is a selected entity we are here talking about is essential, because it seems very plausible that the entity in question should not be any arbitrary given entity, the characteristics of which may be entirely unknown.





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