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Floating Abstraction.md

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epistemology
philosophy
[[LiquidZulu]]
floating abstraction

A "floating abstraction" is any concept without a [[Particular|concrete]] referent. These are concepts that are [[Bundled Philosophy|borrowed from man to man second hand]] without [[The Objectivist Theory of Concepts|the requisite foundation to relate it to existence]].

A floating abstraction is not an integration of factual data; it is a memorized linguistic custom representing in the person's mind a hash made of random concretes, habits, and feelings that blend imperceptibly into other hashes which are the content of other, similarly floating abstractions. The "concepts" of such a mind are not cognitive devices. They are parrotlike imitations of language backed in essence by patches of fog.1

Footnotes

  1. [[OPAR]], 96 ↩