Foundations of the abstract

Continuing this post, this morning I was re-reading a paper I co-authored with Michel Bauwens, which reminded me of the linked discussion. From footnote 2 of that article:

Bryant (2011b) discusses how Bhaskar sees the difference between the transcendent and transcendental. The former assumes a metaphysical foundation for knowledge as described above. Transcendental deduction bypasses such a framing by speculating on what virtual preconditions must be supposed for knowledge to be possible. The virtual by this definition is multiple and immanent without any need of a transcendent, metaphysical underpinning. Bryant (2008) explores this in depth in another book about Deleuze.

Nobuhara (1998) asserts that for Hartshorne relative (r) terms are the basis of absolute (a) terms, noting: "As the concrete includes and exceeds the abstract." The ever-changing relative domain includes within itself the abstract absolute. He defines the absolute as supremely relative, or surrelative.

Another way of approaching the asymmetrical relationship between the relative and the absolute is through basic categories and image schema as elucidated by Lakoff (1999). Recall that these prototypes are in the middle of classical categorical hierarchies, between the most general and the most particular. Basic categories are the most concrete way we have of relating to and operating within the environment. Thus both the more particular and more general categories are more abstract. And yet our usual way of thinking is that the more particular the category the more concrete or relative the object it represents is and vice versa.

Which is indeed related to the absolute being asymmetrically dependent on the relative, if by relative we mean those concrete image schema which are the basis of more abstract derivations. It's easy to confuse them because our 'common sense' associates the more concrete objects of the world with the most particular objects on our constructed hierarchies; the same for the most abstract and ephemeral of thoughts, which do not seem physical or material. And yet these hierarchies are not constructed that way, instead being from the middle up and down via image schema and basic categories.

Such things are unconscious and not readily apparent. So of course we can 'reason' from both the bottom-up and top-down in such hierarchies if we associate the relative with the most particular and the absolute with the most general or abstract. But we do so from the most concrete of image schema, the actual relative, while the top and bottom of the usual, classical hierarchy are the most abstract.