this is my way out of the "what is truth?" questioning

"the truth" is conceptually an adjective. to treat it as a noun is to get into philosophically tight spaces.

The trouble with those concepts is that there’s no way to measure them precisely. This tends to be at odds with the scientific method, though people try to sidestep them.

E.g. the noun definition of green is

> a color intermediate in the spectrum between yellow and blue, an effect of light with a wavelength between 500 and 570 nanometers; found in nature as the color of most grasses and leaves while growing, of some fruits while ripening, and of the sea.

This is different than saying that quarks exist, and that protons are formed from two up quarks and one down quark. These are truths of nature, whereas your examples are of human nature. It’s hard to even say whether a statement about them is true or not, let alone that those things exist.

> green is literally a noun

Well, it can be, if you say something like, "I ate some greens." But most of the time it's an adjective, as in, "The pine trees were tall and green."

“Green” is the noun that describes the property being referenced by the adjective.

Do you think "big" is a noun? Can you show me a big? Two bigs?

No, I know green is a noun and I can show you two greens.

Would you please? Because I cannot imagine how you would do it. I can imagine how you could show me two green things, just as I can imagine how you could show me two big things, but I cannot imagine how you could show me two greens but not two bigs. Please enlighten me.

Yes, I need a green thing to show you a green. But you are looking at a green when you view the green thing. I can show you “big” but cannot show you two bigs because big is a comparison of the size of two things. Size is a property of a thing (and yes, I can show you two sizes).

> you are looking at a green when you view the green thing

Am I looking at a big when I look at a big thing?

Are you a native English speaker?

Yes, I am a native English speaker. No, you are not looking at a big when you are looking at “a big thing”. You are looking at a size when you are looking at an object with size. Is this going somewhere?

I'm trying to understand why you think there is a difference between "green" and "big" so that when I'm looking at a green thing I'm seeing a green, but when I'm looking at a big thing I'm not seeing a big. Yes, big is a size, but so what? Green is a color. Why do you think colors are different from sizes with regards to what part of speech they are?

All colors of a certain set are 'greens', but no particular sizes are 'bigs'. Is the Earth big? Yes, relative to us. No, relative to the sun. "Big" isn't describing size directly the way 'green' describes color. "Big" is describing the relationship between an object's size and some other size.

OK, so can you show me a married? An employed? A four-legged? A three-sided? An objectively-correct?

Do you not recognize that all of those sound weird and are not grammatically correct English?

I can show you "a green" because they are colors and you can presumably see colors. I can show you one green, and then show you a different green, and you can choose "this green" or "that green" as the green you prefer. I can also show you a 'three-side' or a 'four-leg' (I've seen that one used in fiction), assuming a proper definition for either and this would not be grammatically incorrect. I think 'an objectively-correct' could also work but I'm not sure when it would ever be useful; it certainly wouldn't be useful in the way 'a green' is useful. We already use 'employed' as a noun. "This policy will benefit only the employed." Why this only applies to a group is a peculiarity of the language. "A married" I'm less certain about, but it is also more conceptually fraught. Ultimately, I'd say that English is messy and not philosophically consistent; use cases matter a lot.

> I can show you one green, and then show you a different green

Ah. OK, that makes sense. That usage of the word had not occurred to me. I guess I should choose a different word to be my canonical example.

Thanks.