What are abstract concepts?

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Can anyone please explain what they mean? Give me some examples what a abstract concept would be


I have been told I have troubles with them.

Wondering what might be the make up of an abstract concept would be one.

Heredity, posterity, relativity, ...in fact, a lot of words ending in "-ty".

Abstraction is a general concept derived from a collection of specifics. The chair you it on is a specific chair. The idea of a chair concerns all chairs and is therefore an abstraction from a bunch of objects we call chairs. There are many different colors that we call "red" they are all variations of a general portion of the spectrum. The generality is the name "red" that we apply to all those colors that are slight variations of portion of the color spectrum we term as "red" and is an abstraction. Most nouns are abstractions.

There are levels of abstraction. One level of abstraction can be the word "chair". It contains one type of furniture. Another, on the same level is "table". A higher level of abstraction is "furniture" which contains both tables and chairs. A higher level of abstraction would be "solid objects" which contains "furniture" and "vehicles" and "weapons" and many other solid objects. There are some weapons which are not solid objects like poison gas and insults and liquid acids. So there can be complications in making generalities.

Tables are normally on a higher level (so chairs can fit under them)

There are, of course, coffee tables which are lower than chairs and multiplication tables which are neither higher nor lower than chairs and not even furniture.

I never thought I had trouble with abstract concepts until I read this thread; now I'm not so sure.

Actually, sand, I like how thorough and well-thought-out your answer was.

Abstract means things that are not obvious, or things that mean something else. This is the opposite of concrete, where everything is obvious.

Art is a field that relies heavily on abstract meanings. For example, someone could paint a picture of a tropical paradise. While it appears to just be a picture of a beach, with some palm trees and a blue sea, the picture actually conveys a longing for peace, and an ideal life.

Tim

There are different types of abstract concepts. There's the art and symbolism type that Tim_Tex mentioned, and there is also the mathematical type, like variables and operations. There are probably several other types as well. I'm good with the mathematical type, but I can only deal with the artistic type on a limited, intellectualized level. Poetry might as well be random strings of characters for all I get out of it.

Abstract, I think is something with not a 'defined' form. So, language (human language, that's it) is a form of abstract communication. I think that may be a cause I have some difficulties on the abstract communication ( as some asperger's may have, also ) and anthing that you don't have necessarily to use your 'traditional' senses, that's it ; vision, hearing, smell, taste and touch.

OHHHH so that's chairity. I understand now.

Chairity begins at home!

(usually around the kitchen table)

A good example of an abstract concept is volume measurement. Knowing that a liter of water is the same amount no matter what shape the container is (as long as it's the same volume) would be an example of abstract reasoning.

Another field, besides art, that relies heavily on abstract meanings would be literature due to the abstract language that starlighter mentioned above. Just think about what the concept of Big Brother means in Orwell's 1984: abuse of the people by the state.

As for troubles with abstract concepts, welcome to the club! I like to read fiction (Orwell and Goethe especially),but I always read with a concrete understanding in mind, which has caused major troubles in my English classes.

Every event, every object is made up of many many constituents. Shape, color, textures, etc. In addition every viewer makes different connections with an object or event depending upon previous experiences. An artist or writer cannot possibly do any more than abstract a few qualities from an object or an event and use this to represent a whole. A mere splash of blue paint can represent a total sky but the sky is not simple and there are many shades of blue and many other colors and tints in any sky which is continuously changing so there is a huge symphony of possibility in just the color of the sky. Any of these may be the abstract to represent the whole.

There are many ways of working in abstract painting. There is pointillism. cubism. impressionism, abstract impressionism, fauvism, and quite a few others. Some are attempts to abstract the world and some must be accepted as objects in themselves.

Abstraction involves the ability to create symbols and rules. These symbols and rules can be processed to understand and predict the world. It is the opposite of concrete thinking.

If I say that the atmospheric pressure is dropping, to many people, this would be abstract and meaningless. To someone that knew about the abstractions of weather, it would evoke a variety of ideas and patterns, including movements of air masses, approaching fronts, an increased chance of rain, even if there were no clouds in the sky. A person that thinks purely in the concrete would look outside and say "It isn't raining, I don't see clouds, it isn't going to rain anytime soon."