Editing Abstraction (section)

===Compression===
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An abstraction can be seen as a [[data compression|compression]] process,<ref>{{Citation |first=Gregory |last=Chaitin |author-link=Gregory Chaitin | url=http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/sciamer3.pdf | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150509165230/http://www.umcs.maine.edu/~chaitin/sciamer3.pdf | archive-date=2015-05-09 |title=The Limits Of Reason |journal=Scientific American |volume=294 |issue=3 |pages=74–81 |year=2006|pmid=16502614 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0306-74 |bibcode=2006SciAm.294c..74C }}</ref> mapping multiple different pieces of [[wikt:constituent|constituent]] data to a single piece of abstract data;<ref>[[Murray Gell-Mann]] (1995) "[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.6130010105/pdf What is complexity? Remarks on simplicity and complexity by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Quark and the Jaguar]" ''Complexity'' states the 'algorithmic information complexity' (AIC) of some string of bits is the shortest length computer program which can print out that string of bits.</ref> based on similarities in the constituent data, for example, many different physical cats map to the abstraction "CAT". This conceptual scheme emphasizes the inherent equality of both constituent and abstract data, thus avoiding problems arising from the distinction between "abstract" and "[[concrete (philosophy)|concrete]]". In this sense the process of abstraction entails the identification of similarities between objects, and the process of associating these objects with an abstraction (which is [[#Physicality|itself an object]]).
:For example, ''[[#Simplification and ordering|picture 1 below]]'' illustrates the concrete relationship "Cat sits on Mat".
Chains of abstractions can be [[construe]]d,<ref name = Ross>Ross, L. (1987). The Problem of Construal in Social Inference and Social Psychology. In N. Grunberg, R.E. Nisbett, J. Singer (eds), ''A Distinctive Approach to psychological research: the influence of Stanley Schacter''. Hillsdale, NJ: Earlbaum.</ref> moving from neural impulses arising from sensory [[perception]] to basic abstractions such as color or [[shape]], to experiential abstractions such as a specific cat, to [[semantic]] abstractions such as the "idea" of a CAT, to classes of objects such as "mammals" and even categories such as "[[#Physicality|object]]" as opposed to "action".
:For example, ''[[#Simplification and ordering|graph 1 below]]'' expresses the abstraction "agent sits on location". This conceptual scheme entails no specific [[hierarchical]] [[Taxonomy (biology)|taxonomy]] (such as the one mentioned involving cats and mammals), only a progressive [[#Simplification and ordering|exclusion of detail]].