dmb,

It is not a mistake when in the end you know that these analogies are "not 
this, not that."  

---

What do you want from me?  Do you know?  



Marsha 


On May 15, 2011, at 2:41 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> 
> 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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