Re: what is reification?
- From: John Jones <jonescardiff@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 02 Nov 2007 14:18:11 -0700
On Nov 2, 12:19?am, mbstevens <NOXwebmast...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
John Jones wrote:
We have our own experience to show
that there are non-physical laws, and a unicorn would fit in with
these laws without any trouble.
But, John, there are no unicorns to fit into any such laws.
There are pictures, stories, and movies that you and I
can recognize as being _classifiable_
as unicorn-pictures, unicorn-stories, or unicorn-movies.
A unicorn-story might have a unicorn-character that interacts
with other characters in the story. But there are no unicorns.
It isn't a reification to suggest that
there are such entities, its simply a reasonable denial of the
exhaustive extent of physical laws.
There is a difference between reification and a fallacy of reification.
See the Quine definition from earlier in the thread for plain old
reification.
The fallacy of reification seems to be an assertion from the position
that advocates the denial of objects that do not obey physical laws,
that is, the position of materialism or some such. I don't consider
that a reification, more an assertion of a philosophical position.
A unicorn is considered as a fallacious reification IF it is
considered as a hybrid mental/physical entity - such as we might call
a mythical creature. But such object hybrids are the creation of
materialism, and such chimaeric objects (mind/matter hybrids) are
denied by all parties, materialist and non-materialist alike.
But what ought not to be denied is the place that a unicorn has had,
and may still have as an autonomous conscious agency in humankinds
experiential fauna, along with other physically displaced entities
that I am sure we have all come across in our lives at some point.
.
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