Reification
Various forms of fallacies of reasoning or abstraction in which something is, in some way, understood as a “thing” when it is not actually appropriate to do so.
The word is a compound of the Latin words ‘rēs’ (thing, object) and ‘făcĭo’ (to make, to produce). It therefore literally means “to make (something) into a thing”.
The term is used very inconsistently in the literature and can therefore refer to a wide variety of phenomena, depending on the context. These include, amongst others:
- The fallacy of treating abstract concepts as if they referred to something concrete. This is referred to here as Hypostatization.
- A special case of this is the confusion of a symbol with the object or phenomenon it symbolises. This is described here as the Semiotic fallacy.
- Inferring the existence of something simply because there is a term or concept for it is referred to here as the Ontological fallacy.
- The fallacy of regarding or even treating people as if they were objects. This is referred to here as Objectification (of human beings).
- If an abstract model is elevated above reality, this is referred to as the Procrustean fallacy. In some situations, one might even describe this as a kind of “hyper-reification”.
However, all these phenomena can also be described as “reification”. For this reason, most of these articles also have this term listed under “Other names”.