Abstract thoughts

"But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must either be of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea described above... But I deny that I can abstract one from another, or conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible should exist so separated..."(George Berkeley, Introduction to "Principles")

I really like George Berkely. His argument regarding abstract thoughts, I think, very eloquently states why people do not have abstract thoughts, despite their ditch-fuckingly-stupid insistance that they do. Most plainly Berkeley explains his view with an example using triangles:

"What more easy than for anyone to look a little into his own thoughts, and there try whether he has, or can attain to have, an idea that shall correspond to the description that is here given of the general idea of a triangle, which is neither oblique, nor rectangular, equilateral, equicrucial, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once?"(George Berkeley, Introduction to "Principles")

Human beings think in particulars, not abstracts. When one thinks of a triangle, a cat, an apple, one thinks of a particular triangle, cat, or apple. When one attempts to form an abstract of, say, "triangle", one does not in one's mind have an abstract thought. One may have a particular thought, or a collection of particular thoughts, but one cannot have in one's mind a thought of a triangle which is "neither oblique, nor rectangular, equilateral, equicrucial, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once". It's not possible.

This, I think, explains the problems human beings have when they attempt to abstract; when they use the word "cat" or "triangle" or "terrorists". Human beings are trying to do something they cannot do. Human beings categorize things based upon abstracts, yet human beings are incapable of having abstract thoughts.

Very silly.