Hypostatic Abstraction is a specific form of abstraction, identified and pointed out by Charles Peirce. He distinguishes between two types of abstraction – hypostatic and precisive abstraction.
The precisive abstraction was to Peirce something very similar to what we nowadays understand by abstraction. On the other hand, hypostatic abstraction Peirce used to denote the process through which a predictive quality of formal operation is becoming ens rationis (following the laws of rationality) an entity with its own rules.
An example of hypostatic abstraction should be the predisposition “The dress is white” and for one to make from the predictive quality (white) a subject from which to be predicative other qualities (e.g. “The witness of the dress was mesmerizing“). Something similar or analogical could be achieved with formal operations. Although some of the operations will become something on the basis of which other operations should be executed.
For example, the operation of summation of two elements could become a subject of inversion. While summing X + Y, one could present them as Y + X. Hypostatic Abstraction allows for converting the predicate to a subject. The latter means that we could use operation on something that is itself an operation.
While the expression “economical agent” is an example of precisive abstraction, the term “poverty” is a result of hypostatic abstraction (the existence of a subject obtained by transforming the predictive quality “He is poor” is created – in terms from which other things could be predicted or said – “Poverty is soul-destroying“).
The theory of sign creation and interpretation itself depends on abstraction.
Peirce claims that through the operation of the Hypostatic Abstraction one could convert the predicates from signs through which we think to subjects of thinking. Therefore, one is thinking of one sign-thought, while making it an object of another sign-thought.
The Signs are making connections between things that would otherwise be unrelated. In this way, they are often, probably by design, executing their functions to self-erase themselves, directing the attention not upon themselves but to other things. For example, if one is to focus on the letters in a word and their forms and curves or lack thereof, one is to inevitably stop (for the time being that is) and perceive them as signs, precisely because one is focused upon the letters and not through them upon the word. That is to say that if one is focused on the sign and its qualities, instead of its meaning, the sign will be stripped of any meaning.
Yet, the signs could be, in some regards subjects of attention and study.
