Type Token Exist Physical Objects Show Car E.G

Types like "thorny" are often understood ontologically as concepts. Types exist in descriptions of objects, but not as tangible physical objects. A type may have many tokens. However, types are not directly producible as tokens are. One can show someone a particular bicycle, but cannot show someone the type "bicycle", as in "the bicycle is popular." It is often presumed that tokens exist in space and time as concrete physical objects. But tokens of the types "thought", "tennis match", "government" and "act of kindness" don't fit this presumption.

Clarity requires us to distinguish between abstract "types" and the "tokens" or things that embody or exemplify types. If we hear that two people "have the same car", we may conclude that they have the same type of car (e.g. the same make and model), or the same particular token of the car (e.g. they share a single vehicle). The distinction is useful in other ways, during discussion of language.