Talk:Reification (fallacy)

message: Seems tragically confused to my eyes. How could it be that construct validity ensures that the actual construct, rather than its referent, is a concrete thing? The idea is patently absurd. And, how would construct validity ensure that the construct refers to something concrete? I can have a construct which conclusively is about something that isn't concrete, another construct.
I've added two citation needed tags, and think the section should be deleted if there's a need to knock out eminent thinkers whose book you didn't understand.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.77.206.209 (talk) 06:59, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Use of constructs in science

message: "...a meme, if it does exist, cannot seek out prey. And it certainly cannot leap from one brain to another."
Genes/viruses don't literally seek out prey or mates for their hosts (they are inert chemicals that can't move on their own). They don't literally leap from people to people either. Genes too are abstractions at some level. Are genes/viruses a fallacious reification too? Ideas are real, and their being copied is also real. Insofar as memes are a label for ideas that get copied, they exist concretely. This seems to be a controversial example at best. I think something else would serve the role better. 
Also, instead of the criticism being a quote, perhaps a quote that commits the actual reification should be added so that readers can see that the criticism is not a strawman. 
--Matthayichen (talk) 13:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps memes aren't the best example. But they do fit the criteria. Given the widespread misunderstanding that they are indeed real, their inclusion makes the point clearly. I should also say too, though, that your comments about genes and viruses are insightful, and worth some further discussion. --JTBurman (talk) 22:25, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Ideas that get copied are indeed real, aren't they? Isn't the relevant misunderstanding something else, ie, that viruses are actively and even consciously predatory rather than passive molecules that are copied by host cells? Thus the actual point of reification would seem to be the virus-as-active-predator metaphor rather than the meme-as-virus metaphor. In fact, many of those who criticize the meme-as-virus metaphor might be committing the virus-as-active-predator reification. --Matthayichen (talk) 03:39, 15 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure. The paper under discussion doesn't do that, though. And ideas don't get copied; they get reconstructed. --JTBurman (talk) 20:04, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: The distinction between copying and reconstruction doesn't seem to mean much here. For example, take a person who either believes that consciousness ends with death or who doesn't. There is no middle ground. How many virgins the deceased get is a different (but dependent) meme altogether. That's the whole point of memes--to recognize the irreducible building blocks of idea-complexes and to investigate how they are copied--and I say "copied" because reconstruction requires replicating more than one idea unit. --Matthayichen (talk) 06:27, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

text: The sentence saying that the "notion that ideas are literally "infectious," "predatory," and "selfish" is a fallacious reification of the idea-as-virus metaphor" undoubtedly exposes the author as someone who thinks that viruses are literally predatory and literally selfish. A reification of the predation/selfishness metaphor, in other words. I vote for rewriting the given example, and for quoting an actual example of reification instead of quoting a criticism. --Matthayichen (talk) 05:24, 17 April 2012 (UTC)

text:  If memes are an example of the reification fallacy, they certainly are not a clear example. At best they are a controversial example. They should not be used as illustration in the lead. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 14:39, 26 May 2012 (UTC)

text: Using memes as an example of reification is one of the more blatantly POV things I have seen recently. "The concept is important because—as Arturo Rosenblueth, Norbert Wiener, and R. C. Lewontin have put it—"the price of metaphor is eternal vigilance."[2] Indeed, when that vigilance has slipped, whole new fields of study have been built on top of the resulting misunderstanding. Thus, for example, memetics." Wow. JTBurman uses an unrelated quote (the article speaks of crime, not memes) to dismiss an entire field (memetics) in the introduction to this unrelated article. Astounding. Also, as a computer scientist, the idea that reconstruction is not copying is silly. There is no other way to make a real copy of something, except to reconstruct it in a new location. Finally, the paragraph adds absolutely nothing to the understanding of Reification. I am removing it. If JTBurman wants to raise a criticism of the field of memetics, this is not the place for it.Loverevolutionary (talk) 20:41, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

text:  Wow. Just noticed, when I did the edit, that JTBurman was citing his own paper critical of memetics in this page. Bad form, JTBurman, bad form.Loverevolutionary (talk) 20:46, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
replies: text:  Is it bad form? I'm sorry about that. I thought we were supposed to share peer-reviewed research, rather than making claims here in Wikipedia directly. I'm still glad for the discussion, though, because you all have helped me to clarify my understanding reification. JTBurman (talk) 13:14, 7 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:  It took me a while to understand why this was "bad form," but I got it eventually. I will be more careful in the future. (Should you see this happen again, elsewhere, the policy reference is to WP:ORIGINALSYN.) JTBurman (talk) 03:03, 9 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Are memes an example?

message: •Two comments: Your subheading "Ethymology" is not as familiar as the equivalent "Etymology" – the former redirects to the latter in en.Wikipedia. Also, in the "Theory" section you write "A reification circle refers to the event when a norm, first seen as artificial and forces,...." It makes sense to me if "forces" should be "forced" but perhaps you had something else in mind that I'm not getting.
:Made changes referred to above.—Blanchette 07:00, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thanks for the article, Piotrus. 

message: Just mentioning that the authors of The Science of Discworld mention "reifying the privative", or in other words working on the basis that if X is a real "thing" or concept, then the absence of X can be treated as a real thing as well. For example, heat is an actual measurable quantity, but cold is merely the absence of heat and so "shutting the windows to keep out the cold" is actually reifying cold. I'm pretty sure there's a reference somewhere in the book that may be more "acceptable" than a book that's half fantasy novel, half popular science book and I'll try and track it down later. Confusing Manifestation 02:15, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Usage in literature 

message: The first example in the Examples paragraph references Ayn Rand's position on the Existentialist concept of Nothingness. It looks like Ayn Rand completely misinterpreted the Existentialist concept of Nothingness, which is not a sort of metaphysical existent (in that case, it would be reification indeed). Instead, it is more about the absence of a specific thing, e.g. you have an appointment with John for lunch, but John didn't show up. John is not there, thus a negation of John being there. That is Existentialist Nothingness: the absence of a specific thing. "Nothing Noughts" and "Existence Exists" are not similar axioms, as Ayn Rand seemed to have thought. I wonder if she actually read Heidegger herself. I suspect she only read snippets of his works out of context. See also Nothing.
:Indeed. I actually came to the talk page to see if anyone else had a problem with this example, which is completely faulty. Heidegger actually specifically argues against using the term "nothing" in that sense. I'm removing it, but if someone can come up with a good (sourced) example, it would be more than welcome. Smw543 (talk) 02:04, 4 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Nothingness 

message: I find it odd that "literature" is singled out here as the only field in which it is acceptable to use metaphors of this sort. You can find metaphors of all sorts throughout science (it is impossible to have any language without metaphors) and every other field. It only becomes considered a fallacy when one accuses someone else of taking the metaphor too seriously or borrowing from the wrong semantic domains. Using metaphors of any sort is not itself a fallacy, which is what this particular article implies at the moment. --24.147.86.187 21:01, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I amplified that second paragraph to address your concerns and make the distinction between metaphorical and fallacious reification clearer. —Blanchette 00:53, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Just in literature?

message: I reverted deletions by user 59.101.37.166.  Removing sentences or paragraphs because they are unreferenced is not always appropriate. Most recently-created Wikipedia articles are poorly referenced but in time they evolve into something better. Naturally if the information is not only unreferenced but actually false, it should be deleted, but then we would hope for a reference to a reliable source that contradicts the false information, if only by being a comprehensive treatise on the subject which does not confirm the information in question. In other words, I agree that the burden of proof is on the editor who inserts or defends the information but Wikipedia policy definitely allows unreferenced material on noncontroversial topics. As it states on WP:VERIFY, "Material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source," Which means, of course, that unverified material is permitted until challenged. So now that this material has been challenged please note that the WP:VERIFY also states, "Any edit lacking a source may be removed, but editors may object if you remove material without giving them a chance to provide references. If you want to request a source for an unsourced statement, consider moving it to the talk page."
It should be obvious that operating on the principles of 59.101.37.166's deletions, the entire article except the "the reification of the zero" quote should be deleted. This article was only created this past April. Patience has served Wikipedia well in the past and should continue to do so. I would be grateful to user 59.101.37.166 if he/she would discuss improvements to this article before deleting any more. I too have doubts about the sentence, "When people describe nonbiological events (like a geyser) or social institutions (like government) as alive, they are committing a reification fallacy," not because it is unverified or  I think it is false, but because the article does not go on to explain the rationale (or historical reason) for using the term "reification" for both the case where an abstraction is treated as a concrete, and where a non-living thing is treated as if it were a living thing, since it is hard to see the latter as a subset of the first. Perhaps the etymologically defined reification was expanded to include attributing new properties to things that do not actually possess them (newthingification?), but in any case, this article would benefit from a clearer expositions of the different senses and shades of reification. As for the second paragraph, it makes the vital distinction between metaphorical reification which is certainly an example of treating an abstraction as if it were a concrete ("justice is blind"), and fallacious reification. If you want to know more about why this paragraph is necessary see the original Reification [] talk page where the problems of making the distinction between metaphorical and fallacious reification led to a dead end for the fallacy article.—Blanchette 12:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Blanchette, thank you for reminding us of the all-important principle that wiki pages are always to be improved, not prevented from being imperfect. I just reverted my own revert of a doubtful claim with tenuous support. I hope it leads someone to find or write some better material, making use of whatever good nugget it contained. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 16:05, 30 May 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citations Needed — Also Patience 

message: Regarding a state as a conscious being: "This product is known to the state of California to cause cancer." 
Is that really a fallacy?  It seems to me that that is nothing more than a shorthand for "the government of the State of California" (which in turn is itself shorthand for "the people who make up the government of the State of California") Nik42 (talk) 05:07, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It is a fallacy because a State cannot think. The people of the State may, but the State itself does not have a brain. 12.197.112.117 (talk) 05:01, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  State? 

message: I have a problem with the example of supposed confusions about "nothing".  The idea of there being no thing with a certain property can be modeled trivially with simple mathematics.  The empty set is the set that contains no thing.  A set is merely an abstract box (or, if you are a constructive mathematician, a concrete representation of an abstract box), and the empty set is a box devoid of content.  The semantics of the empty set are straightforward and consistent.  One can easily reason about "nothing" by analyzing a set that is uniquely (as there is only one empty set) related to "no thing".  In fact, because there is only one thing that is related to "no thing", we can twist language around a little (but still remain in the first-order logic) to say that there IS a thing the empty set contains, and it is called "nothing" (though it would typically be denoted as an upside-down T _|_, and pronounced "bottom" (or "false" or "contradiction" or "inconsistent" or "nil", and is a generalization of the empty set for "lattices" and "categories".  This is mathematical reification, and it is not a fallacy.  It is powerful and unifying abstraction.
What would be a fallacy is concluding that the notion of nothingness is false, contradictory, or inconsistent because _|_ is called "false" (or "0") in the context of Boolean lattices, or "contradiction" in the context of lattices of deductions, or "inconsistent" in lattices of partial functions, or "Nil"/"Null" in lattices of SQL relations.
I intended on merely getting rid of the offending example, but I decided to rework my "complaint" here into examples.
75.164.165.187 (talk) 20:43, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Many substantial claims were made in the section you added, and all of them lack citations. This violates the Wikipedia:No_original_research policy. For this reason, I have removed this section from the article. --Beala (talk) 08:17, 9 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nothing 

message: Because of an effective fork with a synonym, I merged  into the article as a section.Novangelis (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fallacy of misplaced concreteness 

message: Thanks for the post, BenKovitz. Rudolf Carnap is one reliable source who finds Heidegger's thoughts on nothing as fallacious and absurd as I do. There is surprisingly little reliable material to be found on the fallacy of reification despite the fact that you would be hard pressed to find anyone who would defend the proposition that there is no such thing as the category error of treating an abstraction as if it were a concrete. I have been studying this issue and I think that the real problem is to be found in (1) a disagreement among philosophers about what constitutes the distinction between the concrete and the abstract (see Abstract object and its references) and (2) a profound confusion among laymen, such as those editing this article, about the same issue, betraying ignorance on even the points where most philosophers agree (except extreme Platonists), such as the claim made above that a clearly abstract mathematical idea, such as an (or the) empty set should be seen as proving that a  nothing with properties exists concretely. There is a good article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy on Abstract Objects and I hope to find some useful material in its extensive references that may illuminate this article. Meanwhile, perhaps we should consider opening the body of this article with a discussion of what it means to be concrete or abstract, because it looks as though a professional quality article on the fallacy of reification will eventually have to show how whether a proposition commits the fallacy of reification depends on one's view of abstractness and concreteness, which may account for the disagreement on Heidegger. All prominent viewpoints should be represented. Needless to say, this article still needs the help of an expert. —Blanchette (talk) 06:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Abstract versus concrete 

message: The present introduction states:
: For example: if the phrase "holds another's affection", is taken literally, affection would be reified.
But an emotional thing like an affection is certainly not an abstraction (compare to pure ideas like justice, money, redness, or the scientific notion of force). It is a real thing, if indeed not physical; moreover, since it is rather hard to tell apart real from concrete, one may well say an affection is concrete; this is a question of point of view or definition.
Thus, I consider this example at best misleading and ambiguous. 
denis "spir" (talk) 15:48, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Improper example in introduction 

message: After reading the article I still have no idea what the reification fallacy is. That's rare within Wikipedia.
Crasshopper (talk) 12:40, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  confusing 

message: Since our understanding of climate change is based on models, which are "maps, not the territory", for the lack of having a dedicated planet on which we can conduct experiments, aren't the conclusions a form of the Reification fallacy? "The models say this, and the models represent the planet, thus the planet is that way". 216.31.219.19 (talk) 01:29, 14 March 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Making predictions with a model is not fallacious, but it can be wrong if the model is inaccurate. To disavow the use of models would be to abandon science entirely, as the scientific method depends on hypotheses - models - of how the world works; climate science is not special in this regard except as regards the particular thing being modelled. Magic9mushroom (talk) 14:05, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Example: Global Warming? 

message: There's an infamous argument for the existence of God which goes "God is perfect; a perfect being is more perfect if it exists than if it does not; ergo, God exists" (there are similar variations involving greatness). The general response (again variously stated) that "you can't define things into physical existence" seems to be a claim of reification. Should this be mentioned in the article? Magic9mushroom (talk) 14:20, 9 June 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: I was going to suggest the example of proofs that God exists myself, but I'm not sure this variant is really it; this is more like glossing over the assumption that the set of perfect beings is nonempty. The ontological argument of Anselm gives a better formulation, I think. The key point is that it starts with the existence of the idea of God, and then goes on to reify this. 37.2.117.154 (talk) 20:38, 30 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ontological argument for the existence of God 

message: This article strikes me as far too vague and abstract. What it lacks is at least one widely comprehensible example, as has already been pointed out in this comment piece. To illustrate the kind of improvement I'm looking for, here's an example I've invented right off the cuff to illustrate  the fallacy known as argumentum ad consequentiam:
:"If God didn't exist, then there could be no eternal afterlife at his side. The very thought that when I die I'll just be dead—Poof! Nothing more forever!—disturbs me to my core. And that's why I believe that God exists; he provides me such comfort."
Could someone who understands this notion of a fallacy of reification add to the article such a clarifying example.—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 16:49, 29 June 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  One clear, solid example? 

message: Good morning Martin
No, it's good afternoon, because you had lunch already
Good afternoon Martin because I had lunch already  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.212.84.2 (talk) 20:26, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fallacy 

message: Do current fads for notions like 'artificial intelligence' and 'quantum computing', et al, satisfy the criteria for reification? Given they do not exist in reality, and are most unlikely ever to exist, given the current state of the [computer science] art.
I infer such unrealistic ideas are only being promoted by venal types anxious to separate fools, faculties and venture capitalists from their money. Note to self: Do remember to mention my time travel research next time I encounter a wealthy fool.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.151.210.84 (talk) 18:47, 28 May 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do AI and 'quantum computing' meet the criteria? 

message: The famous work The Treachery of Images is based on the Map–territory relation and is a perfect example of Reification. I propose adding it on this page.  SSyntaxin (talk) 18:37, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: I would say it's a better illustration of the map–territory relation specifically, and not so much reification broadly—compared to other instances, a drawing of a pipe is arguably much more concrete than other abstract concepts that may be fallaciously reified. I like where you're coming from though—there should be some sort of classic illustration of the topic. Remsense留 18:40, 31 December 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  I propose adding "The Treachery of Images" as a main image for this page