up:: Fallacies
Reification
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.
In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: “the map is not the territory”.
Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (e.g. metonymy), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy.A potential consequence of reification is exemplified by Goodhart’s law, where changes in the measurement of a phenomenon are mistaken for changes to the phenomenon itself.
wikipedia/en/Reification%20(fallacy)
> Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.
In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: “the map is not the territory”.
Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (e.g. metonymy), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy.A potential consequence of reification is exemplified by Goodhart’s law, where changes in the measurement of a phenomenon are mistaken for changes to the phenomenon itself.
Reification is the act of treating an abstract concept as if it were a concrete thing. It can be a logical fallacy, or it can be used in other ways, such as in psychology, computer science, and Marxist philosophy.
| Context | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Logical fallacy | Treating an abstract idea as if it were real, which can lead to confusion and illogical thinking |
| Psychology | Perceiving an object as having more spatial information than it does |
| Computer science | Turning an abstract idea into a data model or object in a programming language |
| Marxist philosophy | Perceiving human social relations as inherent attributes of people or products of those relations |
Examples
- Thinking of “Mother Nature” as an autonomous being that can go to war with humans
- Thinking of love as a little fat baby with a bow and arrow
- Reasoning that people do good in the world, therefore good exists in the world as a chair does
- Defining “home” as just a roof over one’s head, instead of the center of a web of relationships
Reification can be used as a rhetorical device, and is not always fallacious.