Language

Do you think that there are important differences between general thoughts (like "People are animals" or "Everybody must pay their taxes") and concrete ones (like "That cat is an animal" or "I must pay my taxes")?

Comments

Well, there's "important" and there's "important," but I'd say that the most important difference is in the sorts of logical things one can do with each kind of thought. There are many different forms of argument that depend upon what logicians call fully "distributing" their terms. So, from "All people are animals" we can reason quite easily to Anna Nicole was an animal. But from the fact that "That cat is a pet that belonged to Anna Nicole" we can't reason to the idea that "All cats were pets that belonged to Anna Nicole." In fact, you might say that to a large extent, the sciences are concerned with general ideas, rather than concrete ideas, as you describe them. There are, of course, poetic differences, too, that might sometimes be important. Perhaps the most important thing about concrete ideas is that they refer to the existential particularities of one's own life in a way that general ideas don't. Or perhap better, general thoughts are important to one individually only to the extent that they relate to the particular, concrete circumstances of one's own life. It matters little to me, existentially, whether or not some rare spider in Patagonia that I have never encountered and never will encountered is poisonous. It matters a great deal to me, by contrast, whether or not the spider crawling on my sleeping child's neck is poisonous.

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