4 Ways of Thinking About Abstract Objects – Philosophy Tube
Are numbers, sets, colours and Hamlet really objects? Are they abstract? What does that mean?
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Suggested Reading:
David Lewis, On The Plurality of Worlds
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Music: ‘Show your Moves’ and ‘Pamgea’ by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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@rortys.kierkegaard9980
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
instantiation is a helluva drug….
Platonism just pushes the question back and ends in an infinite regression… In its effort to solve the problem of universals, it created an infinite number of them
Abstract objects are concepts. Concepts do not exist, they are explanations that are either true or false. Objects exist (objects do not have a truth value, as all values are ascribed). Properties are concepts, so they don't exist; they either describe the referent or they don't.
@NotDeadYetProductions
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Love the book rec!
@FalseEcumenismRejecter
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Wouldn't "nominalism" qualify as an "abstractus"? or am I wrong some how?
@mst4813
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Looking to answer this question and stumbled upon this video only to realize its "philosophy tube". I didnt know this channel had such a crazy arc
@belgiumcomics2537
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
What if tomorrow a meteor falls on earth and wipes out all humans?
Is it still fair to say Hamlet's play exists?
I mean unless its found by a alien species or some animals evolving into the next dominant society on this planet i think you can argue it might as well never have existed from that point.
@lou-e
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Since the human mind is infinite, and math, everything that could exist is written somewhere, encoded in the mind/world, so everything exists already, it just needs to be made
@kapileshwarprasad7389
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Do they have consiousness?
@DarthBorehd
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
“All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need… fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME…SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
@rekall76
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
is a 'pure' object in the realm of forms (not defined by its properties but 'a thing in itself'), by necessity, abstract? or, can an object represent a 'pure' concrete archetype, and exist in both the realm of forms and objective reality?
@Uncharted__drift
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
My girlfriend is a perfect example of an abstract object.
@MBarberfan4life
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
There isn't an uncontroversial account of the distinction between abstract objects and concrete objects. That's because it's far from clear what account of abstract objects is correct (i.e. Platonism, Nominalism, Aristotelianism, Conceptualism, etc.).
@BizVlogs
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Well, it’s all horrible. This is my area of study. There is no distinction between abstract and concrete, everything is abstract. Even when you talk about a copy of hamlet, you are not talking about the atoms that compose it, you are talking about interpreting those atoms in a certain pattern that looks like a play in the human language. But the atoms of this manuscript are not even the “true” underlying reality. Atoms are an abstraction of quarks, and quarks are an abstraction of quantum fields. And quantum fields are an abstraction of something we have not yet discovered, and so on and so on. And I would assert Abstract Realism, which states that all abstractions are just as equally true as their underlying reality.
The real distinction between abstract and concrete that you’re trying to get at here, is if humans are easily able to distinguish the underlying reality from the abstraction. If you have a golf ball, which is an abstraction, you can easily trace it back to the atoms that make it up. If you have something abstract like a play, it’s harder for people to see its underlying reality. But I would argue that it’s underlying reality is simply all instances of that play being performed, all copies of the play, all interpretations of the plays in all of the minds that it’s affected, that kind of thing, which are all of course, “physical” in nature.
@2b-coeur
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
i got a sort of intuitive grasp of this subject thanks to the people who approach it via metaphor/analogy & the structure of human cognition and language – "Surfaces and Essences: Analogy as the Fuel and Fire of Thinking" {my beloved} is where i got into that subject
@tariktarek5835
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Let's take justice for example. I can surely point at a just man btu all I am doing is pointing to matter behaving in a certain way. The man exista in time and place but justice! Justice is a concept that exists only in thoughts. Thoughts themselves are brain biochemical activities. I think of a house but that house doesn't exist in time and space. 1+1 is a concept that becomes concrete only when I associate with matter ( applesfor example) but from a physical point of view, it's just matter. The mathematical concept exists only in your mind. Without language ( abstraction) the universe is silent and anware…
@ColeB-jy3mh
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
I strictly want to avoid supporting all companies that advertise on YouTube because all their commercials are just annoying
@ravenecho2410
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
probability distributions are abstract objects which affect your life, like they're not the ocncrete -> and they don't actually relate to the concrete situation, BUT say you're playing poker the generative process of the concrete is from said distribution which leads to some base level implications about the existing state.
@havenbastion
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Abstract things do exist in space and time, as patterns in a physical brain, and they do have casual power; i like to call it psychology.
@olbluelips
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Maybe there are eternal abstract objects which always existed and always will (like a square, pi, or a set), and temporal abstract objects that are created at some time and likewise may be destroyed (like Hamlet). Perhaps eternal abstract objects cannot cause things (over time), but temporal ones can.
As for how we came up with eternal abstract objects in the first place… maybe they represent some sort of transcendent truth and structure that is inherent to existence/our universe/whatever. An eternal abstracta is omnipresent
@Gluckel
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Abstracta seem to be emergent from minds, they don't exist in the same way concrete things do if they can be said to actually exist at all. Abstracta being something real and it existing are two very different things, but that is just another quirk in our languages.
@luckystar3641
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
"brief"
"2 hours"
@SashaRomeroMusic
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
I think abstract objects are simply useful linguistic and informational tools that don't actually exist anywhere but our brains. They all boil down to memory. You read or watch Hamlet and you remember it as an entire play because that's just how our brains categorize that kind of memory. But because it's a somewhat shared memory, you can discuss it as if that memory exists in some abstract realm, and pretend you're all accessing this singular entity that is Hamlet, but really, all that's happening is that you're all recalling a memory of your experiences with Hamlet. Memories are physical objects implanted somewhere in the brain, so there is no abstraction to be found there, except within our minds.
@mishapurser4439
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
David Lewis also rocked the world of modal logic. He's basic reading for anyone studying it.
@polar3849
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
expected a java tutorial, questioning the existence of 8 now
@keenanarthur8381
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
William James's 'Varieties of Religious Experience' is a decent Western psycho-philosophical analysis of mysticism that sheds some light on the kinds of experience that might lead people such as Plato to believe in forms, or a wide variety of other metaphysical beliefs based on atypical subjective experiences.
@Joy_wolfOG
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Well its interesting that there is a dichotemy between abstract and concrete but ignoring the category of mental completely. (are you implying any stance on the mind-body problem here?
The way I understand abtracta is that its a place where all ideas rest and while its not physically able to enact any change, it can be referred to cognitively, thus us knowing about it. To me it seems that abstracta is a set of all possible things, orders, and propositions, and we cognitively point to specific ones when thinking about them. the same way you dont have an actual chair in your head when imagining a chair, but rather a cognitive referral to a chair you can have cognitive referrals to things that do not exist as matter such as numbers. another way to think about abstracta is thinking about propositions. If i have a proposition "its raining outside" this can that mean the same thing as
draußen regnet es, because the meaning isnt tied to the sound or writing of the word but rather the sound points to the meaning
@sansbeans
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
This reminds me of discussing things that have matter and things that don't with my 8th grade science students. They would make good philosophers – how can I say for sure that feelings like love and hate don't have matter? Aren't they represented by physical occurrences in the brain? Or my favorite semantic argument – love and hate have matter because they MATTER, in terms of making an impact on a person or persons
@anoushmovsisian8293
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Honestly, I was looking for programming videos, but I guess this is also about abstraction.
@TheProdigalMeowMeowMeowReturns
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Why didn’t You discuss the serious arguments favoring the existence of abstract objects?
@DeepakKumar-vv5qr
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Let's practice some abstract thinking. Let's think about sex😂😂😂🤣🤣
@younggod5230
April 17, 2026 at 5:17 pm
Hammlet actually did exist before Shakespeare wrote it. As prooven by the fact that a monkey could have written it, going by the famous phrase, given enough time even a monkey would write a Shakespeare play. This just means an infinitly long input of random keys of a keyboard will eventually contain every piece of literature l, dialog and documentary ever concieved and ever to be concieved. Creative creation like writing or painting is inherantly more a matter of discovery and rearrangement of already existing parts of the universe. Because according to one of the laws of thermodynamics, at least I believe it's from them, matter can neither be created nor destroyed only transformed. Yes the creation of a play is not the same like creating matter, nevertheless, looking at the monkey on keyboard phrase there is a fitting parallel to be found.