OK, my favorite thing to argue about. now, this will involve a little bit of language arts, but please dont leave, read the whole thing, you will be intigued by the end.

~a concrete object is defined as an object that can be detected by one of your 5 senses, like a book or a person, or a computer.

~an abstract object is a object that cannot be detected, like a idea , concept, or whim.

now, this is very tricky, take night. i say its is abstract. people tell me "of course its concrete, you can see it" no, you cant see it, you only see the darkness it produces(because it is really only the absence of light) they say "you can feel it" no, you can feel the cold produced by the lack of light, not the night itself. "you can hear it" no, you hear the animal noises produced by the animals, not the night. ect, ect.

so what do you say? there are many other objects we can discuss this over when night is argued to death.

If night you mean by darkness...


In order for us to answer this question we must pose a few questions first.

What is darkness?

What color is darkness?

Can we see darkness?

Night is not an object nor it is an idea. We can see it and yet we can't touch it. It surrounds us and yet it doesn't touch us. We are afraid of what might lurks inside but it can not harm us.

Anyone have any answer to these questions?

I would say that it is concrete. Just like the wind itself is abstract, but that which it touches, makes it concrete, because then you can see it, feel it, even smell it.


Reese


OK, I just reread what I posted.. I am going to leave it, but I think it was a bad example.. I cannot type what I am thinking... It just isn't coming out right.

Here's what I think - the night, the darkness, the wind - these are natural phenomena. They are not objects, they are not subjects, they are abstract nouns.
Same as the feelings - sadness, hapiness, etc... You can describe them using other words... I am sure that if you open any book on linguistics you'll find an exact definition about abstract nouns, object nouns, etc.

By the way Meriam-Webster defines a noun as: any member of a class of words that typically can be combined with determiners to serve as the subject of a verb, can be interpreted as singular or plural, can be replaced with a pronoun, and refer to an entity, quality, state, action, or concept.

There you go...

I think its neither. I believe its a state of mind ie. Nocturnal animals may consider darkness daytime in whatever way their brains can

What is Darkness? Darkness is defined as Lacking or having very little light amongst other things, here is a link: http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dicti...3/d0029300.html

What is Night? A period between dusk and dawn.

http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dicti...5/n0101500.html

Both are concrete, they both have sensations associated with them! It’s true you can’t touch night or darkness, but you see them; lack of light, you can feel them; it’s cold, you can hear it some say animals, I say silence and weather it can hurt you, Fear of Dark, thought it’s more of an emotional trauma, it is very real!

I understand not all countries always experience dusk and dawn in certain months, but like I said “night”, it a concept we created based on darkness!

Oh my god. This takes me back to PHL1001: Philosophical Problems. My university professor was the funniest... anyways, back on track...

If that course in philosophy taught me anything, I would respond by saying that darkness is not something you feel or see. Rather it is an idea or concept. We only know darkness because we have light. If these two did not coexist, the concept of light and dark would not exist. Hence, they would niether be concrete or abstract. But because we can make comparisons and contrasts, we have an idea of what darkenss is... You feel me?

These are the questions of the universe. They challenge your philosohpy, make you argue, think and debate until you sh** your pants. Or if you're me, it just makes you bored.

Peace.

OK, since every bodys bored with night, how about fire? people say "you could touch it" but you cant, its a energy reaction. you cant feel it either, its the heat (a bi-product of the energy reaction) you can feel. you cant hear it, the roar is from the air molecules being bumped around, the pops are from liquid in the wood instantly evaporating, and so on.

is love abstract then or concrete, or does it, like many other things, only exist once you have experienced it?

it has been quoted to be a long term hormonal imbalance.

you cant see it, but if you have experienced it, then you have felt it, but maybe with a sixth sence!

how abouts a new one. what about death... much like darkness you cannot see it, smell it, feel it, touch it nor hear it. you may say yes we can but we cant much like darkness we can only see its by products.
we smell dying flesh, we can feel dead bodies, we can hear and see dying people but no where along the line can we see death itself
(unless sum1 knows otherwise?. does he still wear that cloak?)

Let's see, night, is it a concept, idea, or a whim? I think it is pretty concrete. It happens. The name itself "night" can probably end up like that, but the lack of light, yeah that is pretty concrete. What about "day", is that the lack of no light? Seeing that we as animals do use our five senses different during day and night, it would make it very concrete, because we still use them, just different during those periods. Some different then others, but only because of that whole nocturnal thing.

Is fire a concept, idea, or a whim? Aside from all the chemical processes, yes I can see it, hear it, feel it, smell it, ok you got me never tasted it, but I am sure if one wanted to, they could. Is a proven chemical or physical process a concept, idea, or a whim? Like fire?

Is this the discussion about a hole we had in physical science class all over again?
You can see a hole, you can feel a hole, but it has no mass, no energy....
And it's not abstract cause you can see it.

OK ,time for me to put this baby to bed. No one thing just is. All things are just a sum of their parts and when you add up those parts you get a physical thing to describe. Therefore you can't just call night an abscense of light. If you could you could go into a dark room and say it was night. There are multiple factors that combine to create the condition of night, therefore it exists.
The same goes for Fire. The chemical reaction itself is not fire. It's a combination of all the things that make it up, i.e., visual flames, heat,noise, etc. Therefore we define all this as fire.
Also with Love. You may not be able to see love but it has measurable effects on the body and mind. We observe or feel the effects of it and call it love. If we didn't have the term "love" we might call it by another name or none at all, but it would still exist.
Hope all that makes some sense...

night is abstractoid

The way I see it, night is just time.

Nothing really changes except the temperature and how much light, but if the sun rose at 12am then nothing has really changed the physical makeup of the world.

I think trying to prove whether or not time is Concrete or Abstract is a more advanced arguement but thats just me.

What about colors? Those are only an illusion of light, certian colors being absorbed, while others are reflected.

Yes but you can split light into it's component colors. Therefore we know light exists because of those colors. The same logic works backwards, if we can see light and we know light has an invisible spectrum of colors then those colors must exist or there would be no light...

hmmm.... I see.

night is only day without light, as death is when you have no life..... i think.....

This all goes back to the fundamental question does reality exist at all. I had a three hour argument about that with my boyfriend and we came to the conclusion that pizza and movie makes the entire situation solve itself.

And seeing as light is only one component of the electromagnetic spectrum, asking if light does intrinsicly exist therein is the same as asking do radio waves exist (that we hear) microwaves (that cook lousy food) and gamma rays which mess up my CD player.

You must pardon my ignorance towards the lengthy social discussion you are partaking in and hope you do not mind if I answer the original question. It is simple to conclude beyond all doubt that night is abstract. It matters not how you percieve night in its colours or forms........night is an idea. If you take the word night away from all knowledge you would simply have the sun rising setting then the moon rising and setting. Time itself is an idea, and if you want to desrcibe night as anything, it is a time period hence "night-time". I am sorry if I you do not understand my explanation but I think the most basic way to put it is that night is a way of describing when it becomes dark ie. during an eclipse "its like night" or "it is now night". This demonstartes it is an idea as the word night is determined by the individuals perception.
I would be pleased to answer any questions or counter-arguements to the above.

Night is concrete.........but then again in my city the day is concrete too.
Concrete and steel

I think what Mazda is saying is that the word "Night" is an abstract concept, not that the periods of light and not-light that Earth experiences..
That said, I think it's just arguing semantics. It wouldn't matter if we described it as night, darkness, or Solar Disappearance. It wouldn't alter how real such periods are..

Chauncy you have a good and valid point, falco rex on the other hand is trying to steer us back into the lengthy discussion that were previously taking place. Not that from what I have seen in other posts that his points are not very good.

The arguement here is whether night is abstract or concrete. I will attempt to explain my point one more time.

The best way to illustrate the fact that it is abstract is that night is a time period and is not based on a set amount of time. As time as a loose term and is abstract the simple fact that night is an even looser idea derived from what is already a loose time demonstrates that it is abstract.

Night describes what is happening when a number of things happen. The things that make night, night are concrete but the term night is used to describe these concrete things as a singular thing. Ie. we do not say the sun has gone down, the stars have come up and the moon is in the sky (which are all concrete things) we simply say............it is night....the idea which links all of these concrete things......that is what an idea is and why night is abstract......I thank you.

Night is a noun, not an adjective. Night is the name given to the period of time between dusk and dawn. I suppose that would make it abstract: it is a human concept, since it measures a period of time, and time is a human concept as well. The components that make up night may be concrete or abstract, but Night itself is definitely abstract in my mind.

The fire discussion, though, does become complicated. Personally, I'll stick with an abstract object being an idea, thought, feeling, or concept, Fire being none of the above. Fire IS the visualization/physicality of the conversion of matter into energy, thus being concrete.

It's a good question, though. I could see it making the average human confused.

Is'nt it the same as a nods as good as a wink to a blind bat???


maybe not then

1. First of all, night is only night for us humans, and other day-light creatures.
There is a broad light spectrum which do not change by night or day, or at least don't change as drasticlly as the visible-light spectrum.
For example, a bat sees with sound waves. For him, there is no light nor day. Many creatures see with infra-red vision - like snakes. For them, a winter might be darker then a hot summer night.
And if there are creatures who see with radio-waves - for them, just like the bat, there is no night nor day.
This is like trying to define intelligence.

2. Fire is quite simple so explaind. But one must be specific about what he means. Does it mean the flame, or the process itself?
As fire is only one way for the same process which cause iron to rust, I think you mean to ask "what is a flame".
The flame is concrete - it is a plasma, a fourth form of matter (after solid, liquid, gas). The plasma in the case of fire is formed by the heat of a specific chemical reaction called oxidation.

i believe "night" and "day" to be just like time itself, it is not concrete it is only perceived. they are words applied to things to rationalize that which has no true mathmatical or scientific value, they are only perceptions of what is happening around you. good question though.

Night as defined is the time when our planet rotates on its axis and the area which becomes darkened from the lack of light given off by the sun. It's a terminology
given by humans. A concept is an idea, Night is a concrete!

Well of course the night is abstract! Night is kind of like the "default" of nature. It is most certainly abstract. Now day... that's something that needs to be caused. It can't "just be there" like night does.

Everything is abstract. Nothing actually exists. Everything is simply a mixture of electrons and protons. Various objects simply have more or less energy. Since everything is energy nothing is what it actually appears to be. Our perceptions are a lie. The event we perceive as night is simply a state of less energy.

Hmmm.

Velikovsky your post was excellant!
Help me friend if you will.
If nothing exists Whats electrons and protons?
Whats energy?
Whats perception?
If there is no existance no sense of self how come we are posting here.
Life has been given to us velikovsky we get to be alive my man praise be to god or whatever.
3million years of evolution cant mean we dont exist

Since the beginning of our time existense has always been our question. Do we really exist? Is what we see in our everyday real or are we just a figment of someone's imagination? Are we in our own dreams living the way we want? ...for you know...at times we CAN predict our own future/s. There are endless possibilities of what we are and can be. But the fact of the matter is to not question our moment in time for if we do.. it is valuable time wasted. The answer to this question will never be answered by a being who only uses 2% of its brain. Enjoy what you have now for in a few seconds it may be too late. Have a good day!

hehe, i feel much better now

I'm noctournal and to me night is night and day is day, i'm just awake before sunset and sleep after sun rise. Night is tangiable to me. When the earth turns so the sun is below the horizon it is classified as night.

yeah, night is just a term, a name for the change. its abstract.

OK…

Without turning this into a religious thread (which I don’t want to do). But... Darkness or simply the lack of light is the basic substance that everything is made of.

- Bear with me -

As far as the telescopic eye can see darkness - or the lack of light - fills most of the universe as far as man made technology can physically deduce. So, earth, or any physical or mental aspect or plain is divided into two physical or emotional levels- light and dark; and in a sense, good and bad, heaven and hell, God and Satan, right and wrong and so on and so forth. But because 99.99 (to infinity) is darkness, then wouldn’t the fact that we have light be the odd factor? Darkness or dark is the universal norm: light is the anomaly that affects earth in a way that it doesn’t affect the rest of the galaxy.

So, when we say darkness can’t be touched. Or fire can’t be touched, isn’t it all just what the mind comprehends? Light is the odd one out, because light is the anomaly that stands stark against everything else that is apparent in our universe.

Anyway, just ignore my ramblings!