881. abstract

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"Concreteness is what makes instances of an abstract property instances, rather than abstractions or properties over again. Thus concreteness, like relativity, is the inclusive idea" ("Duality versus Dualism and Monism": 53).

Couldn't one say, then, by analogy, that "abstractness" is what all abstractions or properties have in common as over against their instances, which are made instances by the concreteness they all have in common?

If the answer is affirmative, it would appear that concreteness and abstractness are disjunctive transcendental properties definitive respectively of instances or concretes, in the case of concreteness, and of properties or abstracts, in the case of abstractness.

"Concreteness" is, of course, cognate with "concrescence," which Whitehead uses as roughly synonymous with "creativity," his favored term for "the ultimate," or "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact."

n.d.; rev. 13 February 2010