What is abstraction?

• A. Judgement
• B. Extension
• C. Abstraction
• D. Comprehension

Answer: (C)

Abstraction is the act of drawing out the essential features shared by many particular things to form a general term. By focusing on what’s common and ignoring incidental attributes like color or size, we create universal concepts such as “dog,” “triangle,” or “truth.” In logic, this enables us to apply one term to many cases and build universal propositions. Extension is simply the scope of a term—the set of things it denotes—rather than the process of creating that term, judgment is a stated assertion about a subject and predicate, and comprehension (in traditional terms) is the content or intension of a term. Abstraction specifically describes forming a general term by removing accidental properties, which is why it’s the best fit.