humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 3, 6:33 pm, Malrassic Park wrote:

> These so-called "professors" and Rand obviously lacked the
> grammatical concepts to deal with such a simple question. 'Existence'
> is not (almost) a collective noun. 'Existence' is what grammarians
> call a mass noun. It is easily identifiable as a mass noun because,
> a. it cannot take a plural, or at least not with ease, as with the
> collective noun "herd," b. its reference is a mass of entities Rand
> called "existents," c. you do not have an 'existence of'
> anything as with a collective noun, for example, a herd of buffalo,
> and d. "existence" does not take an indefinite article.

Do we really need such a complex term as "mass noun". I was always
taught that the word for this was "stuff". For example, "water" is
stuff. You can't count it. You can't really make it plural in the
usual way.

Similarly, "sand" is stuff. You cannot have "a sand", but you can have
"some sand". In contrast, "grains of sand" are "things". You can count
them.

All programmers are required to demonstrate an understanding of the
difference between stuff and things, lest they write programs that
output such nonsense as "You see a sand here." or "There is some car
here."

The universe is divided into things and stuff.

DS