Heidegger

In a message dated 27/06/2007 20:47:33 GMT Standard Time,
michael at sandwich-de-sign.co.uk writes:

Says Jud:

> To reify is to ‘thingify’: to treat an abstraction as a material thing. I
> find such behaviour most unscholarly and unprofessional ’Äì the equivalent
> of skinhead-culture spilling over into the domain of serious philosophy.

MichaelP writes:
Jud,

reification and thingification are surely synonyms, but neither
necesarily means to treat abstractions as material things: why the
restriction to *material* things?

Jud:
Hi Michael:

Consult [Google] and any dictionary you like - the definitions are all
quite clear along the lines of:
*Consider an abstract concept to be real* or * to regard (something
abstract) as a material or concrete thing. }Merriam Webster] They ALL say the same.
I have explained the mechanisms of your own instantiation of *Being* as not
the instantiation OF *Being* but the instantiation of the CONCEPT of *Being*
which is an entirely dirfferent thing. In that sense you are conceptualising
the sense you feel that your existence [dasien] exists IN ADDITION TO YOU
[caps as always merely for emphasis not shouting] Another version is *the
treatment of an analytic or abstract relationship as though it were a concrete
entity.* (Young, p. l09) The process of regarding something abstract as a
material entity, Whitehead’s “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” e. g., the mistake
of confusing a system, which is a construct, with the physical entity
described in its terms (see general systems theory). In social systems reification
is encouraged by the use of language and underlies many processes of
constructing social reality. (Krippendorff)

Thus your neurological behaviour metaphysical ghost-hunting] by *ouja-ing
up* *Being* is immanent — in the sense of being a mental act performed
entirely within the brain [*mind*] and instantiating a ‘pseudomaterial correlate* or
an orphanic concept of a homo duplex drifting aimlessly without a nominatum..

In Marxian usage reification is rather different in the sense of
representing a human being as a physical thing deprived of personal qualities or
individuality; [depersonalisation or objectification.] According to Marx, treating
labour as a commodity exemplified the reification of the individual”

I am very conscious of the widespread employment of reification [most of it
unconscious] in my own researches for many others seem to be frozen in
preconceived ontological perceptions - and - as the majority of folk are like
that, coming up as I do with uncomfortable suggestions calls for intellectual
effort a cognitive exertion that most people find too comfortable to make -
and, from a certain point of view - [like the apparent recently adopted:
*avoidance attitude* of dear Rene just now - why should they?

I have been engaged in researching reification [which before I started on my
dissertation I had no idea was so QUITE so ubiquitous] and have even come
across an academic discussion on how to *overcome the difficulties* of
brainwashing young mathematicians into disciplined ways of reifying mathematical
systems into quote: *Fully blown objects* which took my breath away. Have they no
shame!! *Reification* is now an important part of computer database
methodology whereby *processes* are reified as *objects.* Some HTM meta-language even
refers to certain expressions as *objects* the fact which as a webmaster you
may be already aware.

Michael:
To reify is perhaps rather to treat
something as some thing. Not all things are material things (which
necessarily anyway imply the abstraction of matter {’material’ being a
qualification, meaning made of matter, like matter, from matter, etc}).

Jud:
The materialist [eliminativist] has higher standards of ontological
discrimination. To identify *a thing* as anything other than a material energetic
object is an ontological cop-out, as I mentioned in another form of words in my
last message to Rene. I have no wish to waste time what I have done
countless times before over the years on this list by defining what is meant by a
material object, though the term *material object * is in a sense a

One more time - That which is real is composed exclusively of things, and
things are in every case bodies. (Kotarbinski initially sought to define body
[soma] as *that which is extended in space and time,* as that which is *bulky
and lasting’.* Then, however, he saw reason to add the further condition that
bodies are ‘such as to offer resistance’. Certainly it would be sufficient,
Kotarbinski held, to define ‘body’ as ‘that which is extensive’: But in
order that I avoid misunderstandings which might lead someone to suppose, on
the strength of that definition, that my physics is also concerned with ‘
fragments of empty space’ I hastily insist that *space* [vacuua] as being *that
which is immaterial* could not and does not exist.

Michael -my PC system has become unstable and I am scared I will lose what
I have written - so I will break here and get this off then reboot and
address the rest later. This will also go off unspellchecked.

Bye for now

Regards,

Jud Evans.

Personal Website. http://evans-experientialism.freewebspac…

Posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
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