To repeat the intuitive idea: an abstract model throws away or ignores information from the concrete model, but in such a way that we can still make reliable predictions about some aspects of the underlying system.
That’s not quite my understanding what an abstraction is. What you have described is basic modeling. An abstraction is a model that works well in a large class of disparate domains, like polymorphism in programming. The idea of addition is such an abstraction, it works equally well for numbers, strings, sheep, etc. What you call a natural abstraction is closer to my intuitive understanding of the concept. I do not subscribe to your assertion that this is a “property of the territory”. Sheep are not like bit strings. Anyhow, ideas are in the mind, and different sets of ideas can be useful for predicting different sets of observations of seemingly unrelated parts of the territory. Also, good luck with your research, whatever definition of abstraction you use, as long as it is useful to you.
That’s not quite my understanding what an abstraction is. What you have described is basic modeling. An abstraction is a model that works well in a large class of disparate domains, like polymorphism in programming. The idea of addition is such an abstraction, it works equally well for numbers, strings, sheep, etc. What you call a natural abstraction is closer to my intuitive understanding of the concept. I do not subscribe to your assertion that this is a “property of the territory”. Sheep are not like bit strings. Anyhow, ideas are in the mind, and different sets of ideas can be useful for predicting different sets of observations of seemingly unrelated parts of the territory. Also, good luck with your research, whatever definition of abstraction you use, as long as it is useful to you.
Worth noting that ‘abstraction’ has different meanings in different disciplines. For example, Wikipedia has separate articles for abstraction in computer science, abstraction in mathematics, abstraction in linguistics, and abstraction in sociology.