Awareness of Abstract Objects

Abstract

Awareness is a two-place determinable relation some determinates of which are seeing, feeling, hearing, etc.2 If you see a fire truck, or if you hear a fire truck, then you are aware of that fire truck—i.e., you stand in the awareness relation to the fire truck you see, or hear, and do so because you see it or hear it. Abstract objects are items, such as universals, propositions, numbers, functions, and sets, which contrast with concrete objects, such as solids, liquids, gases, particles, and organisms. It is a nice question what defines the category of abstract objects.3 Typical abstract objects lack spatiotemporal locations and do not stand in causal relations. Saying this much should suffice for my purposes here. It is uncontroversial that we have experiences that make us aware of concrete objects. My topic is the more controversial one of experiences that make us aware of abstract objects. It is important to distinguish two questions pertaining to this topic. First, are there any such experiences? I am not interested in forms of experience beyond our reach; nor am I interested in particular cases. Rather, my question is: among the sorts of experiences that we sometimes have, are there any that make us aware of abstract objects? Call this the Existence Question. Suppose the answer is yes, and that we have fixed on a particular kind of experience that makes us aware of abstract objects. The natural next question is: in virtue of what does such an experience make its subject aware of an abstract object when it does so? That is, the second question to be distinguished is: supposing subject S is aware of abstract object o by having an experience e of the particular sort we have assumed, then in virtue of what does e make S aware of o? Call this the Grounding Question.