Reification (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 which 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 (just like metonymy for instance), 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.

Etymology

From Latin res "thing" + facere "to make", reification can be loosely translated as thing-making; the turning of something abstract into a concrete thing or object.

Theory

Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood and/or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as "facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will". Reification can also occur when a word with a normal usage is given an invalid usage, with mental constructs or concepts referred to as live beings.

Reification

Reification is making something real, bringing something into being, or making something concrete.

Reification may also refer to:

Reification (linguistics)

Reification in natural language processing refers to where a natural language statement is transformed so actions and events in it become quantifiable variables. For example "John chased the duck furiously" can be transformed into something like

Another example would be "Sally said John is mean", which could be expressed as something like

Such representations allow one to use the tools of classical first-order predicate calculus even for statements which, due to their use of tense, modality, adverbial constructions, propositional arguments (e.g. "Sally said that X"), etc., would have seemed intractable. This is an advantage because predicate calculus is better understood and simpler than the more complex alternatives (higher-order logics, modal logics, temporal logics, etc.), and there exist better automated tools (e.g. automated theorem provers and model checkers) for manipulating it.

Reified forms can be used for other purposes besides the application of first-order logic; one example is the automatic discovery of synonymous phrases.

Reification (Marxism)

In Marxism, reification (German: Verdinglichung, literally: "making into a thing" (cf. Latin res meaning "thing") or Versachlichung, literally "objectification"; regarding something impersonally) is the thingification of social relations or of those involved in them, to the extent that the nature of social relationships is expressed by the relationships between traded objects (see commodity fetishism and value-form).

This implies that objects are transformed into subjects and subjects are turned into objects, with the result that subjects are rendered passive or determined, while objects are rendered as the active, determining factor. Hypostatization refers to an effect of reification which results from supposing that whatever can be named, or conceived abstractly, must actually exist, an ontological and epistemological fallacy.

The concept is related to, but is distinct from, Marx's theories of alienation and commodity fetishism. Alienation is the general condition of human estrangement. Reification is a specific form of alienation. Commodity fetishism is a specific form of reification.