Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

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Empiricist-Bruno
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Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Abstract refers to ideas whereas concrete is something that can be perceived by the 5 senses, smell, sight, earing, etc. Okay, so where does the noun senses belong to? Is it abstract or concrete. Does a sense refers to an idea or to something that can be perceived? If your sense is missing, you can perceive it but not using your senses, right? Please help categorizing correctly this noun with appropriate explanations. Thank you
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Takerian »

Sense cannot be perceived by itself. Therefore in your definition it is an abstract noun.
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by WhereIwant2b »

A person without the ability to perceive or sense would not be on a forum to question it. So 'senses' itself must fundamentally be concrete to anyone here. 'Senses' is a name for a set of concrete things- the results of using the senses. How can a set composed of all concrete things be abstact unless all such sets are abstract simply by being grouped? Then there are no concrete sets possible. A group would always be an abstract even though almost every human being on the face of the earth can recognize some or another grouping as existing.

I suppose the noun 'sense'- as in 'he has no sense' - can be driven into the realm of abstract by being applied by someone to a non actual phenomenon but I start hearing spooky movie alien sound effects when that happens.

Is this question a variation on the old nominalism arguments?
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Takerian, seing anything is evidence of sight. So logically, if evidence of sight is perceived by sight, then sight must be a concrete noun.

In the same vein, I would suggest that perceiving evidence of life with the senses is evidence that life is a concrete noun as well.

However, this realization suggests that evidence of the concreteness of life exists not in the object from which the evidence is taken but in its observation.

So, if the concrete nature of life comes through its observation by another, a single living entity in the whole world would or could not appear concretely alive.

The deduction I'm making here is that life cannot concretely exist independently in any one. I wonder if I'm on to something interesting here.
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Takerian »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote:Takerian, seing anything is evidence of sight. So logically, if evidence of sight is perceived by sight, then sight must be a concrete noun.

In the same vein, I would suggest that perceiving evidence of life with the senses is evidence that life is a concrete noun as well.
This is invalid logic IMHO.

In the same vein, feeling senses is evidence of feelings. Feeling is an abstract noun.
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Empiricist-Bruno »

Takerian, to feel is a verb and so it's beyond the subject of this thread. But if you meant, to talk about a feeling being an abstract noun, then I'm not sure. The perception of cold (concrete) is not abstract. A feeling of the coldness must be concrete as it is perceived by the senses. Now having said this, I think that a feeling may not always be concrete. For instance, if an injustice (abstract noun) gives you a bad feeling, then the source of the feeling is abstract and therefore it cannot be perceived by the senses. In that instance, I would agree that a feeling is an abstract noun.

I guess that the abstract or concrete nature of some nouns can depend upon the context in which these nouns are found. I wonder if this is a new idea.
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Re: Abstract or concrete nouns? The noun "sense"

Post by Takerian »

Empiricist-Bruno wrote: A feeling of the coldness must be concrete as it is perceived by the senses. Now having said this, I think that a feeling may not always be concrete. For instance, if an injustice (abstract noun) gives you a bad feeling, then the source of the feeling is abstract and therefore it cannot be perceived by the senses. In that instance, I would agree that a feeling is an abstract noun.

Yeah, it would mean that a feeling can be either abstract or concrete noun depending upon the context. And that's wrong conclusion because feeling is still the same thing in both cases.. The feeling like injustice is caused by conditions that are concrete (for example a knife in your chest). And we refer to all these conditions as an injustice (because we think we don't deserve the knife in the chest). So a feeling is a concrete noun.

However you missed my point. I don't think neither a feeling nor a sense is a concrete noun. I think your proof isn't valid because in this way you can proof that even an opinion is a concrete noun which is definitely not.
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