ABSTRACTION, in philosophy, is the act of forming general ideas (universals). Examples of general ideas are the ideas of “horse,” “tree,” “redness,” which cannot be directly perceived, as contrasted with such ideas as “this horse,” “this tree,” “this red,” which can be directly present to sense perception. Because communication and knowledge are virtually impossible without general ideas or universals, philosophers have speculated about the nature of such ideas, what they stand for, and how the mind acquires them.

在哲学中，抽象是形成一般观念（普遍性）的行为。一般观念的例子有“马”，“树”，“红色”等无法被直接感知的观念，与“这匹马”，“这颗树”，“这种红色”这样的观念进行对比时，它们才能直接呈现在感官知觉中。因为，没有一般观念或普遍性，沟通与知识几乎是不可能的，哲学家推测了它们所代表的，以及心灵是如何获得它们的这种观念的本质。

Plato conceived universals as eternal forms that are more real than the transient particulars of sense experience. For Plato our knowledge of such universals as beauty or justice does not arise from sense experience but from the recollection (anamnesis) of what is already latently present in the soul. Some later philosophers, such as Descartes, held somewhat similar views, maintaining that certain universal ideas come from a clear and distinct intuition by reason rather than from sense experience, though sense experience may occasion the intuition.

柏拉图将普遍性设想为永恒的形式，相比短暂的感官经验细节更为真实。对伯拉图而言，我们对于美和正义这类普遍性的认识并不是来源于感官经验，而是来源于对早已潜藏在灵魂中事务的记忆（回忆）。一些后来的哲学家便持有类似的观点，如笛卡尔就认为，某些普遍的观念就来自由理性产生的清晰而明显的直觉，而不是来源于感官经验，尽管感官经验可能引发直觉。

The term “abstraction” is perhaps more suited to the empiricist doctrines of general ideas than to Platonic recollection or Cartesian intuition. According to Locke’s An Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), things exist only as particulars, but the mind frames a general idea when it “abstracts” the qualities wherein particular things differ, and “retains” the qualities wherein they agree. According to Berkeley’s introduction to his Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), men have only sensuous particular ideas and no abstract general ideas, but they can make a particular idea “represent” or “stand for” all other particular ideas of the same “sort.” Hume, in a Treatise of Human Nature (1739), accepts much of Berkeley’s view but tries to show how, through associative and customary connections, a particular idea can come to serve a representative function. In An Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy (1865), John Stuart Mill also holds that men have no “general concepts,” but by focusing attention on certain parts of a concrete idea and allowing those parts to determine by association the train of thought, they are able to reason about them as if they could conceive of them in abstraction from the rest.

“抽象”这一术语相比柏拉图式的回忆和笛卡尔的直觉，也许更适合于一般观念的经验主义学说。根据洛克《人类理解论》（1690年）的观点，事物只是以细节的形式而存在，但当大脑“抽象”出事物中特定的不同性质，并“保留”它们其中一致的性质时，它就形成了一种一般观念。根据贝克莱《人类知识原理》导言（1710年）的观点，人类只有感观上的特殊观念，而没有抽象的一般观念，但它们可以使特定的观念“表示”或“代替”相同种类的所有其它特定观念。在《人性论》中（1739年），休谟接受了贝克莱的许多观点，但通过联想和习惯的连接，他试图展示特定观念可以如何来服务一个代表性的功能。在《对威廉·汉密尔屯爵士哲学的审查》中（1865年），约翰·斯图尔特·密尔也认为，人类是没有“一般概念”的，但通过将注意力集中在一个具体观念的某些部分上，并通过联想允许那些部分决定思路，他们就能对它们进行推理，仿佛他们能从其它事物中以抽象的方式想象它们一样。

The “associationism” of the British empiricists was sharply criticized by the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who held that abstraction and abstract ideas have their own “evidential” and logical character that cannot be reduced to the mere association of particulars.

英国经验主义者的“联想主义”受到了德国现象论学家埃德蒙德·胡塞尔的尖锐批评，他认为，抽象与抽象的观念有它们自己的“证据”和逻辑的特征，因而不能减化为仅仅是对细节的联想。

                              MURRAY GREENE, New Schools for Social Research

                                           默里·格林，社会研究新学院

                                               2022年6月26日译

（该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第1卷，57页）