Floating Abstraction

A “floating abstraction” is any concept without a concrete referent. These are concepts that are borrowed from man to man second hand without the requisite foundation to relate it to existence.

A floating abstraction is not an integration of factual data; it is a memorized linguistic custom representing in the person’s mind a hash made of random concretes, habits, and feelings that blend imperceptibly into other hashes which are the content of other, similarly floating abstractions. The “concepts” of such a mind are not cognitive devices. They are parrotlike imitations of language backed in essence by patches of fog.¹