Marsha said to dmb:
I've submitted dozens of posts, primarily in the 'Reifying Carrots' thread that
offer such explanations from many different perspectives. Do you understand
'many different perspectives"?
dmb says:
Yes, but you make the same mistake over and over again. As is usually the case,
you just posted a quote to support your contentions about "reification" but the
quote does NOT support them. Quite the opposite. In fact, you repeatedly
disputed William James by quoting one of the biggest William James fans in the
world. You were, in effect, using James to oppose James. This shows quite
clearly that you are deeply confused.
The quote you just re-posted for Mark says that creating "discreet entities
[is] useful for manipulating, predicting and controlling" and is
"conventionally indispensable". But reification is the problem that MAY enter
into it. Your own evidence says this process "may impose ad hoc boundaries on
what are actually densely interconnected systems and then grant autonomous
existence to the segments." Now compare that to what I said in the post you are
allegedly responding.
dmb said:
Reification is not a tool. It is a certain kind of mistake, a conceptual
error... when generalizations and abstractions are mistakenly given concrete,
existential status, when a concept is taken as something more than a concept.
...When they are treated as different kinds of substances or mistaken for
metaphysical categories, you've committed the error known as reification. The
term is used to oppose various kinds of essentialism and Platonism, as well as
SOM.
What's the difference between "granting autonomous existence" and "given
concrete, existential status"? There is no important difference. Both phrases
express the same idea. And so you are using the quote to dispute what the quote
says. The quote does not support your contention that this error is inherent to
conceptualization. Think about it. How would that work? If there were no way to
conceptualize without reification, how would it be possible to make a case
against it? And yet you're quoting a case against it. The MOQ makes a case a
against it. James made a case against it and so did your favorite James fan.
They are all using concepts to opposed this conceptual error. If it were an
inherent feature of conceptualization, this critique wouldn't even be
conceivable. And yet there they are, right in front of you. This means that
your contention cannot possibly be true.
It's like saying "words have no particular meaning". If that were actually true
you wouldn't be able to make the claim in the first place, at least not in way
that anyone could ever understand. And so it is with the phrase
"conceptualization reifies". Because that phrase is itself a concept, it would
be inherently erroneous like every other concept.
Yep. You can bet your bottom dollar that the sun will come up tomorrow and..
you know the rest.
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