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A convenient example of what constitutes a non-physical entity is a ghost. Gilbert Ryle once labelled Cartesian dualism as positing the " ghost in the machine ". [ 9 ] [ 10 ] However, it is hard to define in philosophical terms what it is, precisely, about a ghost that makes it a specifically non-physical, rather than a physical entity.
Examples are a cloud, a human body, a banana, a billiard ball, a table, or a proton. This is contrasted with abstract objects such as mental objects, which exist in the mental world, and mathematical objects. Other examples that are not physical bodies are emotions, the concept of "justice", a feeling of hatred, or the number "3".
It is also similar to the term therianthropy; which is the ability to shape shift into animal form, [3] except that with zoomorphism the animal form is applied to a physical object. It means to attribute animal forms or animal characteristics to other animals, or things other than an animal; similar to but broader than anthropomorphism .
Plato famously held, on one interpretation, that there is a realm of abstract forms or universals apart from the physical world (see theory of the forms). Particular physical objects merely exemplify or instantiate the universal. But this raises the question: Where is this universal realm? One possibility is that it is outside space and time.
Also apophthegm. A terse, pithy saying, akin to a proverb, maxim, or aphorism. aposiopesis A rhetorical device in which speech is broken off abruptly and the sentence is left unfinished. apostrophe A figure of speech in which a speaker breaks off from addressing the audience (e.g., in a play) and directs speech to a third party such as an opposing litigant or some other individual, sometimes ...
The type–token distinction identifies physical objects that are tokens of a particular type of thing. [7] The "type" of which it is a part is in itself an abstract object. The abstract–concrete distinction is often introduced and initially understood in terms of paradigmatic examples of objects of each kind:
In metaphysics, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects cannot justifiably be said to exist in themselves, but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e.g. redness, hardness, softness, sweetness, etc.) situated in time and in space.
A physical object (a possible referent of a concept or word) is considered concrete (not abstract) if it is a particular individual that occupies a particular place and time. However, in the secondary sense of the term 'abstraction', this physical object can carry materially abstracting processes.