ABSTRACT
Hobbes defines 'body' and 'space' by giving instructions for conjuring up the ideas of body and space in the abstract, and he thinks it is possible to form those ideas on the basis of information supplied by the senses and stored by memory (cf. De Corp., ch. 7, i. E I 92). He also assumes a capacity for attending selectively to various 'parts' of the content of a sensory image. Since he is not giving an account of how the relevant universal ideas are acquired, only how they are brought to consciousness after being acquired, it is not clear that his account invites exactly the objections that have been urged against abstractionism by writers in sympathy with Wittgenstein.2 But related objections do apply.
