hypostatic abstraction

hypostatic abstraction

\PMlinkescapephrase

adapted

\PMlinkescapephrase

Adapted

\PMlinkescapephrase

contain

\PMlinkescapephrase

Contain

\PMlinkescapephrase

contains

\PMlinkescapephrase

Contains

\PMlinkescapephrase

occur

\PMlinkescapephrase

occurs

\PMlinkescapephrase

occur in

\PMlinkescapephrase

occur ins

\PMlinkescapephrase

occurs in

\PMlinkescapephrase

occurs ins

\PMlinkescapephrase

trace

\PMlinkescapephrase

Trace

\PMlinkescapephrase

variety

\PMlinkescapephrase

Variety

Hypostatic abstraction

is a formal

operation

that takes an element of information, as expressed in a

proposition

X

⁢

is

⁡

Y

,

and conceives its information to consist in the

relation

between that subject and another subject, as expressed in the proposition

X

⁢

has

⁡

Y

⁢

-

ness

.

The

existence

of the abstract subject

Y

⁢

-

ness

consists solely in the truth of those propositions that contain the concrete

predicate

Y

.

Hypostatic abstraction is known under many names, for example,

hypostasis

,

objectification

,

reification

, and

subjectal abstraction

. The object of discussion or thought thus introduced is termed a

hypostatic object

.

The above

definition

is adapted from one given by

Charles Sanders Peirce

(CP 4.235). The main thing about the formal operation of hypostatic abstraction, insofar as it can be observed to operate on formal linguistic

expressions

, is that it converts an adjective or some part of a predicate into an extra subject, upping the arity of the main predicate in the process.

For example, a typical case of hypostatic abstraction occurs in the

transformation

from “honey is sweet” to “honey possesses sweetness”, which transformation can be viewed in the following variety of ways:

The grammatical trace of this hypostatic transformation tells of a process that abstracts the adjective “sweet” from the predicate “is sweet”, decants the higher-arity predicate “possesses”, and precipitates the substantive “sweetness” in the role of its correlative subject.

1

References and further reading

•

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1902), “The Simplest Mathematics”, CP 4.227–323 in

Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce

, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as (CP volume.paragraph).

•

Zeman, J. Jay (1982), “Peirce on Abstraction”,

The Monist

, 65 (1982), 211–229. Reprinted, pp. 293–311 in

The Relevance of Charles Peirce

, Eugene Freeman (ed.), Monist Library of Philosophy, La Salle, IL, 1983.

http://web.clas.ufl.edu/users/jzeman/peirce_on_abstraction.htm

Online.

Title

hypostatic abstraction

Canonical

name

HypostaticAbstraction

Date of creation

2013-03-22 17:54:01

Last modified on

2013-03-22 17:54:01

Owner

Jon Awbrey (15246)

Last modified by

Jon Awbrey (15246)

Numerical id

18

Author

Jon Awbrey (15246)

Entry type

Definition

Classification

msc 03B42

Classification

msc 03B30

Classification

msc 03B22

Classification

msc 03B15

Classification

msc 03A05

Classification

msc 00A30

Synonym

hypostasis

Synonym

objectification

Synonym

reification

Synonym

subjectal abstraction

Related topic

PrescisiveAbstraction

Related topic

ContinuousPredicate

Defines

abstract object

Defines

formal object

Defines

hypostatic object

Generated on Thu Feb 8 19:48:23 2018 by

LaTeXML