two directions of abstraction
- The brain hemispheres, as far as I can tell, have two different kinds of abstraction.
- The term "abstraction" is most commonly associated with what the left hemisphere does, which is taking things out of context.
- The other kind of abstraction, right hemisphere abstraction, puts things deeper into context.
- eg
- "what's the big picture of this utterance?" is kind of taking the utterance in a more abstract direction, but still situated
- it's abstract because it's like, moving away from the specific
- like if you put a single utterance in context
- of the worldview it came from, the relationship of the people having the conversation, etc
- those are in some sense more general than the utterance itself
- but they're also alive and connected, rather than decoupled
- It sometimes feels to me like
- left hemisphere abstraction is "higher"
- right hemisphere is "deeper"