ABSTRACT
The theory of abstraction through attention presupposes what the theory of the distinctio rationis denies, namely, that there is a certain difference in the contents themselves which corresponds to the difference between the abstract and the concrete. According to Locke, the general and the universal are inventions of the understanding and concern signs only, whether words or ideas. Locke's psychological hypostasis of the general arose due to the following line of thought: In actual reality no such thing as a universal exists; only individual things exist, and they are ordered in species and genera with respect to similarities. Phenomenological descriptions would have to be made in reflection upon the experiences of individual and specific meaning, experiences of purely intuitive meaning and of purely symbolic meaning, and of experiences which are both symbolic and fulfill the meaning-intention.
