ABSTRACT
In this paper I shall first describe what is often regarded as the course of abstraction. I shall use an example from Karl Pearson’s Grammar of Science and then discuss the representation of ‘concepts’ in mind/brain. Concepts, I shall argue, are percepts idealised in the process of internal representation. This will lead me to try and specify what I mean by the internal representation of an ‘ideal’ and an elaboration of the mutual relation between ideals and success in skilled acts.
