Reification
Reification, also called hypostatization, is the logical fallacy of regarding an abstract concept, such as "society" or "technology" as if it were a concrete thing.This fallacy is committed when manipulations that are only possible on concrete things are said to be done on an abstract concept. The fallacy is also committed when an abstract concept is referred to as if it bore no relation to the concrete things that it is an abstraction of.
Note that this fallacy assumes the world-view of epistemological realism[?]. Reification isn't regarded as a fallacy by those who take up the viewpoint of epistemological idealism[?].
In knowledge representation, reification is sometimes used to represent facts that must then be manipulated in some way, for example to compare logical assertions[?] from different witnesses to determine their credibility[?]. The message "John is six feet tall" is an assertion of truth that commits the sender to the fact, whereas the reified statement, "Mary reports that John is six feet tall" defers this commitment to Mary. In this way, the statements can be incompatible without creating contradictions in reasoning.
The tendency to
in human.html">human.html">human nature. The savages who killed Captain Cook firmly believed
them. The highly civilized Romans made gods.html">gods.html">gods out of their dead emperors.
Bushman for some time about the Deity, he found that the savage thought
civilized people.html">people of Atlantis with awe and wonder: "Their physical
tread. Whatever they did was done speedily. They moved through space
the rapid motion of their sailing-vessels. "They were wise, and
people they came in contact with. 'They had a strict sense of justice,
true they were less conspicuous for the latter." (Murray's "Mythology,"
established a government of law, as contradistinguished from the anarchy
men, taking part in battles and appearing in dreams. They were conceived
love and pain, but always characterized by the highest qualities and
Atlantis is found in the fact that "the gods were not looked upon as
already in existence.
The gods dwelt on Olympus. They lived together like human beings; they
social state which was but a magnified reflection of the social system
as characterize human life, were ascribed to them." (Ibid., p. 10.)
Where was Olympus? It was in Atlantis. "The ocean encircled the earth
p. 23.) It was a great island, the then civilized world. The.
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