Abstraction of state of happiness

[Milbern]

I don’t know how to make abstractions. I have searched the internet, but so far I haven’t found an example. I hope you can share your thoughts on how to do abstractions. I just want to have some idea about the state of happiness, which is why I am asking about abstraction.

Here is my perspective on the flow of my abstraction:
Anything that can be described as happy → Being Happy → Happiness / State of Being Happy → ? → State of Happiness

I have only limited vocabulary , so it is difficult for me to do this alone. I also have some questions in mind, which are as follows:

Using the example "Happiness as a state of being happy," happiness will be the common state abstracted from what “being happy” stands for, right?

In getting the idea of happiness, does it vary from person to person because it depends on the number of particulars of being happy that each person considers? For example, if person A observes 50 things that can be described as happy while person B observes fewer, then each observer will have a different definition of happiness. If this is correct, despite this variation, the most general meaning of happiness is still the state that is abstracted from all things that can be described as happy, right?

If I am going to elevate my abstraction one step higher from Happiness, what possible particulars to which I could draw out the idea about state of happiness? Can you provide some examples of these particulars?

Thank you.

 

[teechar]

I don’t know how to make abstractions.

Why do you need to do that?

 

[Milbern]

Why do you need to do that?

I have been studying English grammar by myself, so I mostly base my understanding on the help of a dictionary. Whenever there are abstract nouns in the given definitions, I get stuck. I don’t have a teacher, like in school, to ask questions personally. I read books on English grammar, but they do not explain much about abstraction and abstract nouns, so I am raising this question in this forum. Furthermore, I am currently studying this topic (abstract nouns).

 

[Rover_KE]

Have you seen this page?

 

[Tarheel]

Well, you talk about happiness, which is an abstraction. Thoughts and feelings are abstractions. We can't see them or touch them, but they exist. We don't make abstractions, but we can talk about them.

I suggest that you use shorter, simpler sentences.

There are all kinds of abstractions. Ideas are abstractions. They are real, but you can't touch them or see them. Surely you know how to talk about them in your native language. Do you?

 

[jutfrank]

This is how I would get you to think about this very difficult topic:

The noun 'happiness' and the adjective 'happy' both denote what you feel or experience, not a state. Ignore what your dictionary says about happiness being 'a state of being happy'. This is very confusing at best and completely philosophically mistaken at worst. What the dictionary writers should say is that 'happiness' is the noun formed from the adjective 'happy'. Look:

happy

This is an adjective. Adjectives are very useful in that they can be used to describe things in world.

-ness

This is a noun suffix. This is a way to turn adjectives (modifiers) into nouns. You take the adjective 'happy', then you add the suffix -ness and now you have a noun. The main reason to do this is for grammar purposes—the sentence you're using needs a noun, not an adjective. It's not just adjectives that can be turned into nouns with suffixes, verbs can too. For example, the suffix -ing can be used to make the gerund noun 'being'.

The difficult thing to understand is that as soon as you turn an adjective into an noun, since most nouns usually are things, with clear defintions, your mind believes that you're now talking about something, rather than just a mere decription. You're deceived into thinking that happiness is a thing, when actually it isn't. People who make this mistake call this kind of thing an 'abstract' noun, because it has no definition (i.e., there is no way of tracing its outline). The people whose job is to write definitions in dictionaries misunderstand this, and so tend to call these words ending with -ness 'states' or sometimes 'qualities' because they don't know how else to define them. They think that if the headword is a noun, they should provide another noun to serve as a synonym. I think this practice is wrong.

 

[Milbern]

This is how I would get you to think about this very difficult topic:

The noun 'happiness' and the adjective 'happy' both denote what you feel or experience, not a state. Ignore what your dictionary says about happiness being 'a state of being happy'. This is very confusing at best and completely philosophically mistaken at worst. What the dictionary writers should say is that 'happiness' is the noun formed from the adjective 'happy'. Look:

happy

This is an adjective. Adjectives are very useful in that they can be used to describe things in world.

-ness

This is a noun suffix. This is a way to turn adjectives (modifiers) into nouns. You take the adjective 'happy', then you add the suffix -ness and now you have a noun. The main reason to do this is for grammar purposes—the sentence you're using needs a noun, not an adjective. It's not just adjectives that can be turned into nouns with suffixes, verbs can too. For example, the suffix -ing can be used to make the gerund noun 'being'.

The difficult thing to understand is that as soon as you turn an adjective into an noun, your mind believes that you're now talking about something, rather just a mere decription. (This is because most nouns usually are things, with clear defintions.) The brain is tricked into thinking that happiness is a thing, when actually it isn't. People who make this mistake call this kind of thing an 'abstract' noun, because it has no definition (i.e., there is no way of tracing its outline). The people whose job is to write definitions in dictionaries, called lexicographers, misunderstand this, and so tend to call these words ending with -ness 'states' or sometimes 'qualities' because they don't know how else to define them. They think that if the headword is a noun, they should provide another noun to serve as a synonym. I think this practice is wrong.

Thanks a lot Jutfrank!

To sum up what you have said, can I say this: 'All these, what are called abstract nouns and their corresponding root forms express the same idea; they only differ in their grammatical form within the sentence'?

 

[jutfrank]

To sum up what you have said, can I say this: 'All these, what are called abstract nouns and their corresponding root forms express the same idea; they only differ in their grammatical form within the sentence'?

Well, for words ending with -ness at least, in their most general sense, yes, I think that if you adopt this view it will solve your immediate problem, so I'm just suggesting a way for you to start thinking about this.

The truth is that abstract nouns are far more complicated and much of the time it's clear that they do indeed denote things in the world and can be usefullly defined. It's far too big a subject to generalise in one thread. If you want to talk about any particular abstract noun, you have to look at it in use, in its natural context. Note though that there are cases where even words like 'happiness' can be much more easily be inderstood as discrete things.