" ‘Concrete reality’ contrasts with ‘abstract reality’: some hold that numbers and concepts are real things,
part of reality, but are abstract entities rather than concrete entities. One quick way to characterize
concrete reality is to say that to be concretely real is to be capable of entering into causal relations."
That is Galen Strawson. Note the careful wording: this is a "quick way" of distinguishing
concrete from abstract. Strawson is not presuming to offer it as a definition.
This quote shows Strawson preparing to set out metaphysical views of his own, he is here speaking
NOT in a history-of-philosophy context. But it brings to mind that, as my friend Henry has mentioned in
comments on this blog, Strawson has set out a view of Humean notions of causation in which Hume's
view is not what it has commonly been taken to be. Hume meant, Strawson says, only that our experience of
causation is limited to correlation, not that the fact of causation simply is that of correlation,
There is, in Hume's view as Strawson develops it, a hidden connection
that accounts for the regularity of sequences such as the way a flame regularly appears when a dry match
is firmly struck. The connection is not absent. It is just hidden, a different contention.
That is precisely what is intriguing about the above. In his own voice (not Hume's) Strawson is
invoking causation as the distinction between abstract and concrete.
Relatedly, William James, in his Principles of Psychology, says that that a real nail will hold up a frame.
An imaginary or a painted nail will not hold the frame up.
Hume was thinking chiefly of events as causes and effects -- like the appearance of the flame in the
above example. James was thinking of objects in what one may call an equilibrium -- the painting hanging
over time on its nail. We say that the painting stays in place because the nail is there. Is one or the other
way-of-talking primary. Should James have said that the removal of a real nail will cause the frame and
its painting to fall, whereas the erasure of a painted nail will not?
I suppose I've gotten myself into a fly bottle here....
I don't get it. Both ways of talking are correct. Why does it matter which is primary (as if we could measure that)? Why "should" James have spoken in the primary way? I also don't understand the connection between this and the contrast between concrete and abstract reality.
ReplyDeleteIt might make a big difference to one's ontology. You can see "things" as a bit of relative stasis within process. Or you can see "process" as something things do. Perhaps abstractions are the things that don't do anything to other things, even other abstractions. So abstractions are unprocessed things. But it seems to me the Humean notion of events as cause and other events as effect lends itself more naturally to a Heraclitean view of the world that starts with process. The river that is different for each step. Heraclitus might say that a dry and unlit match is a fire-in-preparation.
DeleteBy the way, I am grateful that you explained "a hidden connection." Strawson's book is actually "The Secret Connection," but that's beside the point. When I read it, I did not think about what the title referred to, and now I know. Maybe I didn't know before because I didn't read the whole book, which I found repetitive.
ReplyDelete