Reification (also known asconcretism,hypostatization, orthe fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is afallacy ofambiguity, when anabstraction (abstractbelief or hypotheticalconstruct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity.[1][2]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 ofnatural language, as well as ofliterature, where a reified abstraction is intended as afigure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logicalreasoning orrhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy.[3]
A potential consequence of reification is exemplified byGoodhart's law, where changes in the measurement of a phenomenon are mistaken for changes to the phenomenon itself.
The term "reification" originates from the combination of theLatin termsres ("thing") and -fication, a suffix related tofacere ("to make").[4] Thusreification can be loosely translated as "thing-making"; the turning of something abstract into a concrete thing or object.
Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as "facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will".[5]
Reification may derive from an innate tendency to simplify experience by assuming constancy as much as possible.[6]
According toAlfred North Whitehead, one commits thefallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstractbelief,opinion, orconcept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality: "There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete. It is an example of what might be called the 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.'"[7] Whitehead proposed the fallacy in a discussion of the relation of spatial and temporal location of objects. He rejects the notion that a concrete physical object in theuniverse can be ascribed a simple spatial or temporalextension, that is, without reference to its relations to other spatial or temporal extensions.
[...] apart from any essential reference of the relations of [a] bit of matter to other regions of space [...] there is no element whatever which possesses this character of simple location. [... Instead,] I hold that by a process of constructiveabstraction we can arrive at abstractions which are the simply located bits of material, and at other abstractions which are the minds included in the scientific scheme. Accordingly, the real error is an example of what I have termed: The Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.[8]
William James used the notion of "vicious abstractionism" and "vicious intellectualism" in various places, especially to criticizeImmanuel Kant's andGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's idealistic philosophies. InThe Meaning of Truth, James wrote:
Let me give the name of "vicious abstractionism" to a way of using concepts which may be thus described: We conceive a concrete situation by singling out some salient or important feature in it, and classing it under that; then, instead of adding to its previous characters all the positive consequences which the new way of conceiving it may bring, we proceed to use our concept privatively; reducing the originally rich phenomenon to the naked suggestions of that name abstractly taken, treating it as a case of "nothing but" that concept, and acting as if all the other characters from out of which the concept is abstracted were expunged. Abstraction, functioning in this way, becomes a means of arrest far more than a means of advance in thought. ...The viciously privative employment of abstract characters and class names is, I am persuaded, one of the great original sins of the rationalistic mind.[9]
In a chapter on "The Methods and Snares of Psychology" inThe Principles of Psychology, James describes a related fallacy,thepsychologist's fallacy, thus: "Thegreat snare of the psychologist is theconfusion of his own standpoint with that of the mental fact about which he is making his report. I shall hereafter call this the "’psychologist's fallacy’par excellence" (volume 1, p. 196).John Dewey followed James in describing a variety of fallacies, including "the philosophic fallacy", "the analytic fallacy", and "the fallacy of definition".[10]
The concept of a "construct" has a long history in science; it is used in many, if not most, areas of science. A construct is a hypothetical explanatory variable that is not directly observable. For example, the concepts ofmotivation in psychology,utility in economics, andgravitational field in physics are constructs; they are not directly observable, but instead are tools to describe natural phenomena.
The degree to which a construct is useful and accepted as part of the currentparadigm in a scientific community depends on empirical research that has demonstrated that a scientific construct hasconstruct validity (especially,predictive validity).[11]
Stephen Jay Gould draws heavily on the idea of fallacy of reification in his bookThe Mismeasure of Man. He argues that the error in usingintelligence quotient scores to judge people's intelligence is that, just because a quantity called "intelligence" or "intelligence quotient" is defined as a measurable thing does not mean that intelligence is real; thus denying the validity of the construct "intelligence."[12]
Pathetic fallacy (also known as anthropomorphic fallacy oranthropomorphization) is a specific type[dubious –discuss] of reification. Just as reification is the attribution of concrete characteristics to an abstract idea, a pathetic fallacy is committed when those characteristics are specifically human characteristics, especially thoughts or feelings.[13] Pathetic fallacy is also related topersonification, which is a direct and explicit ascription of life and sentience to the thing in question, whereas the pathetic fallacy is much broader and more allusive.
Theanimistic fallacy involves attributing personal intention to an event or situation.
Reification fallacy should not be confused with other fallacies of ambiguity:
Therhetorical devices ofmetaphor andpersonification express a form of reification, but short of a fallacy. These devices, by definition, do not apply literally and thus exclude any fallacious conclusion that the formal reification is real. For example, the metaphor known as thepathetic fallacy, "the sea was angry" reifies anger, but does not imply that anger is a concrete substance, or that water is sentient. The distinction is that a fallacy inhabits faulty reasoning, and not the mere illustration or poetry of rhetoric.[2]
Reification, while usually fallacious, is sometimes considered a valid argument.Thomas Schelling, a game theorist during the Cold War, argued that for many purposes an abstraction shared between disparate people caused itself to become real. Examples are: the effect of round numbers in stock prices, the importance placed on the Dow Jones Industrial index, national borders andpreferred numbers.[14] (Compare the theory ofsocial constructionism.)
Whether a phrase commits the fallacy depends crucially upon whether the use of the inaccurate phrase is inappropriate in the situation. In a poem, it is appropriate and very common to reify nature, hope, fear, forgetfulness, and so forth, that is, to treat them as if they were objects or beings with intentions. In any scientific claim, it is inappropriate.
