token

In philosophy, the terms "type" and "token" distinguish between abstract concepts and their concrete instances. A "type" refers to a general category or idea, such as the word "dog" or the thought that "snow is white." A "token" is a specific, individual occurrence of that type. For example, each time the word "dog" is written or spoken, it's a token of the word type "dog." Similarly, two people can have different tokens of the same thought type, like both thinking "snow is white" at different times.1

This distinction is also relevant in materialism, a philosophical view that reality is entirely material. Materialism rejects the idea of immaterial substances or properties. Within materialism, "token materialism" posits that each individual instance of a mental state (like a specific pain) is identical to a particular physical event. This contrasts with "type materialism," which suggests that a general phenomenon (like pain itself) is identical to a general physical phenomenon. The concept of tokens is also used in computational theories of mind, where thinking is viewed as the manipulation of electronic tokens in a "language of thought".23