Marsha said to Mary:
I wonder what this post is about. It is my understanding that to take an
idea, like Radical Empiricism which is a hypothetical construct, and to state
that it is concretely demonstrable is a form of reification. Do you think I am
wrong?
dmb says:
Are you wrong? Yes, hopelessly confused.
But more to the point, you should get your own thread going, one where words
can mean whatever you like.
"Reification is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction is treated as if it
were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the
error of treating as a "real thing" something which is not a real thing, but
merely an idea. ...Etymology: From Latin res thing + facere to make,
reification can be 'translated' as thing-making; the turning of something
abstract into a concrete thing or object".
If radical empiricism were being reified it would be presented and treated as a
thing rather than an idea. As far as I know, nobody has ever treated it as a
thing, an event or a physical entity. Do you know of any such treatment? Of
course not. Radical empiricism is a very powerful antidote to the reifications
that haunt philosophy, particularly the Cartesian dualism known as SOM.
"Nothingness. Another fallaciously reifying use of "nothing" is found in this
joke: A man walks into a bar. The bartender asks him what he wants. "Nothing,"
he says. "So why did you come in here?" "Because nothing is better than a cold
drink." The fallacy is manifested in the listener's interpretation of the man's
answer, as, if the joke were successful, the listener is led to conflate the
semantics of the two distinct but interrelated notions of emptiness and
nothingness. If interpreted without this natural equivocation, the man's answer
literally — if awkwardly, in the context of answering the question — means that
he would prefer to drink nothing than to have a cold drink, instead of the
commonly understood meaning, "Cold drinks are better than everything"."
Nothing is better than discussing philosophical ideas with you because your
view makes everything look better.
"essentialism |iˈsen sh əˌlizəm| noun Philosophy. a belief that things have a
set of characteristics that make them what they are, and that the task of
science and philosophy is their discovery and expression; the doctrine that
essence is prior to existence."
"nothingness |ˈnəθi ng nis| noun. the absence or cessation of life or existence
: the fear of the total nothingness of death.• worthlessness; insignificance;
unimportance : the nothingness of it all overwhelmed him."
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