Hypostatization / Reification

Reification, also called hypostatization, is the logical fallacy of regarding and/or discussing an abstract concept, such as god, society, or technology as if it were a concrete thing.

Anthropomorphism

Anthropomorphism or personification is the attribution of human characteristics to inanimate objects, animals, forces of nature, gods, and others. "Anthropomorphism" comes from two Greek words, ανθρωπος (anthrôpos), meaning human, and μορφη (morphé), meaning shape or form.

Reification Error

The personification of abstracts. The belief that giving a name (a mental construct) to something or invoking the name of something implies or assumes it has a separate, real, concrete existence.

This provides the justification for superstitious and supernatural thought: magic, demons, ghosts, angels, gods, even God's existence according to St. Anselm's ontological argument.

It is a crude and primitive form of thinking akin to childlike-phenomenalistic-magical thought. Reification occurs in most religious arguments—a speaker may wish to prove a point, or a distinction, and in so doing gives this alleged phenomena a name.

By offering up a new term that really only represents a difference with no distinction, and through repeated use, the arguer comes to believe in the existence of this new substance as if the named abstraction were now a concrete thing. This best represents the insidious quality of reification—in arguing over matters such as teleology, eschatology, the Will of God, the Attributes of God, religion, etc. what is forgotten is that all these matters are conceptual and exist only in our minds then communicated as factual in the artifice of language.

Reification (Hypostatization) is a language fallacy that involves ascribing existence, substance, attributes, and behavior to mental constructs or concepts, then talking about these constructs and concepts using language that presupposes them to be real. It is similar to a metaphor, but a metaphor that has been extended too far and taken to a spurious extreme.

When applied to fantastic entities or gods, it is similar to anthropomorphism.

While it is useful to be creative and employ metaphors and abstractions in our language, unless we are mindful of the symbolic (albeit artificial) properties of words we risk the danger of treating abstract entities as 'real' solely through the attributes we metaphorically use to describe them.

How we talk about and discuss things has a great influence on what we believe about them, which means our impression of reality is often structured by the very language we use to describe it. Within time, our descriptions become more meaningful to us than reality itself and we end up believing in the descriptions we use as more real than all the tangible stuff that reality has to offer. No where is this more evident than in the language theists use when talking about God. For example, militant theists are either willing to kill others or allow themselves to be killed solely for the metaphorical descriptions they use and the language they invoke when talking about the needs, desires, and will of their God.

Being aware of this reification fallacy can teach us to pay critical attention to the words we use or else we risk projecting our descriptions outside the abstract world of language and into the realm of the concrete world itself.

Most people are unaware of the use of reification when employing religious or supernatural language or even what reification is and how it affects their worldviews. As such, it is a serious topic and has far-reaching cultural, societal, and historical effects.

In the case of religious zealots, it is a matter of life and death. For the sake of the Will of God, terrorists and other fundamentalist extremists are enacting violence in the 'real' world solely because they have ascribed proprietary existence, attributes, wants, and desires to supernatural entities whose descriptive 'nature' exist only in the imbued artificiality of words.

How do they know what their God wants?

   → They point to words.

How do they know what their God will do?

   → They point to words.

How do they know what their God dislikes?

   → They point to words.

And it is only because of these words, and not because of any evident or perceptible information, that man's religious history is wracked with violence, death, torture, guilt, pride, and ignorance.

Until we, as a global race, recognize we are allowing abstract words to control so much of our behavior and our lives, words that represent inexplicable and insoluble mental images only discernible as synthetic constructs, we will continue to act irrationally and superstitiously not because of anything we can actually see, touch, or feel, but only because of the interior goobledegoop we are able to say, quote, and think.