Ontology of Stock Price Indexes
Philosophers usually divides existing things into abstract objects and concrete objects. The candidates of abstract ones may be propositions, relations, properties, and sets. The commonsense candidates of concrete ones may be trees, dogs, cats, horses, houses, tables, and many other physical things.
I am sometimes wondering whether stock price indexes such as Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite, etc, are existing objects or not. If they are existing things, are they concrete or abstract???
I am sometimes wondering whether stock price indexes such as Dow Jones Industrial Average, NASDAQ Composite, etc, are existing objects or not. If they are existing things, are they concrete or abstract???
Comments (4)
This is an Excellent Question. Let's not go into too much depth with it, lest we stumble upon some highly inconvenient truth. The price of a stock is supposed to have something to do with concrete reality, right? But we know that the up and down movement of stock prices is often driven by fairly whimsical, non-production events. (Like, "After Angela Merkel slapped Donald Trump's face and said he was "Zu dumm fur Worte" the DJIA dropped 259 points.")
It seems like some stock take on lives of their own as speculative instruments. Real money changes hands, the stated value goes up and down, but to what is that activity tied? It's hard to tell. At least the stock of some companies is tied to real activity. Electrolux actually produces things (lots of appliances). BNSF is a real railroad that hauls around real stuff like waste paper for recycling, coal, new cars from Japan, and tea from China.
Money itself (fiat currency) is pretty much an abstraction; it's based on faith. Insubstantial. We hope to God that the faith in our money lasts. If not, we will be maximally screwed, and the screwing won't be at all abstract.
We as a nation confer certain values on currency, we give it a social reality, a social function, social power. It's has a subjective ontological reality. A stock index is a measure whose reality is derivative of the corporations it tracks for value.