“But if the abstraction in the model is insufficient to describe at least the important and relevant aspects of reality, then what usefulness or validity does the model still have?”
I always wonder when a person speaks disparagingly about abstraction on their meaning and what each thinks is being expressed, what they are trying to point to. The concrete is discrete and exact in particular, and without abstraction there is **no intellectual sense**. It is impossible to embrace life in such an atomistic outlook. The intellectual outlook is pretty useful and valid.
Featured Image: Signposts the direct way to Heart versus Mind. An image with a signpost pointing in two different directions in German. One direction points to the heart, the other points to the mind. The stupidity conveyed here, in an image which crosses out verstand, is not to understand that human cognition does not divide ‘heart’ and ‘mind’: thought and passion are one in belief; correctly so, as in history it has always been so, and will always be in the human condition (the denial of an emotional response has subtle feeling).
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Neville Buch
Latest posts by Neville Buch (see all)
- Dear grossly, ethically, corrupted - December 21, 2024
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- Stephanie M. Lee on “AI by omission”, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Thursday, December 19, 2024 - December 20, 2024