Reification (hypostatisation) is the error or fallacy of treating an abstract concept (say movement, dancing, flying, love or beauty, etc.") as if it were a real, concrete thing when plainly it is the moving, dancing, flying object or the lover or beautiful person or thing that actually exists.

For the most part fallacious arguments based on reification go unrecognised in philosophical writings and discussions. In all my years in higher education the word reification was not mentioned once.

The semantic error of thingification (Verdinglichung or Vergegenständlichung) has become part and parcel of natural language, particularly when manipulations that are only possible on concrete things are said to be performable on an abstract concept. Reification is a cognitive bias or partiality that prevents objective consideration of an issue or situation.

This is only a very general introduction to an area which might be called: an hierarchal apportionment of blame. But I am generalising, for within each of the guilty disciplines some offenders are worse than others, and some, very few, are aware of the pitfalls of thingification and takes steps, as best as they can, to avoid, or at least ameliorate the effects of such ontological irrationalism with a more careful choice of language.

Because over the milennia language has developed to accomodate beliefs in the supernatural and occult it has evolved in such a way as to be largely reliant upon reification. Reification which is manifested in the forms of abstract nouns, gerunds and infinitives have become enmeshed into the very fabric of human thought and communication. Thus the sentential avoidance of such ontological obfuscation requires a degree of circumlocution.

Some reifications are adaptively benign. Descriptions of generalisations which lack the need for detail enable faster decisions when the quick communication of commands and warnings is vital. Sentential short-cuts are of greater value. For example, in battle the cry: Danger to your right! communicates a form of warning where speed is of the essence and there is no need for an explanation of what precise (denotata) the reification danger signifies.

Most internalised reification is the result of childhood imprintation derived from members of the society into which the child is born. Such parental, social and religio-political influence is mostly naive.  However, some agents have an ontological agenda of their own, which is maintained by denying the young any ideas which might lead to a questioning of the fallacies or the development of the appropriate mental mechanisms to discern such false beliefs.

Cognitive bias is a general term that is used to refer to the many distortions in the human mind. They are difficult to eliminate and usually lead to perceptual aberration, faulty judgment, or illogical interpretation and reality-disconnectedness.

It must also be pointed out that the vast majority of people are completely unaware that they reify and most natural language speakers are unknowingly guilty of generating highly unnatural ontological language.

                                                        DANGEROUS  REIFIERS

Many serious reifiers employ thingification deliberately, rhetorically, cynically and obfuscationally for the purposes of manipulation and control. We can identify members of this class as being: power orientated politicians, agenda-driven economists, bankers pushing sub-prime mortgages, money-driven lawyers, perversion-propelled priests, religious fundamentalists, advertising executives, salesmen, copy-writers, establishment-compliant educationists, psychologists, neurologists, and journalists, etc.

Have I left anything out? Yes, deliberately, there are many, many more. Some are more obvious than others. I will leave you to expand the list based upon your own experience. But what are the two MOST obvious omissions?

The least blameworthy domain - is that of scientic-reification, which, as a milder reificata-type, is far less damaging. Its reliance on useful fiction is positive and necessary in order to articulate and model its postulates and theories. Aspects of as yet undiscovered areas of knowledge such as exactly what the reifications energy or waves mean in relation to waving energised physical entities for example act as a useful provisional bookmarks pending further investigation. Science (and by this I mean hard science, maths, physics, chemistry, engineering, electronics, the earth sciences, etc.) is the least harmful form of thingification and occupies the lowest degree of debilitating, irrational reificational activity. Any damaging repercussions for society and human culture are not actually inflicted by the products of its reifico-assisted hypothetical models, hypothetical exemplars and descriptive mappings of complex entities or processes. Such mereological descriptions of conceptual wholes, made up of complicated and related parts, entities, and processes which such scientific investigation and production give birth to and put into the hands of mankind, are not motivated by a malignancy that can be found in acquiescently sanctioning, exculpatory philosophy and objectively competitive, mutually- destructive religious cults, but by the transcendentalistically orientated and dominated reificating centres of political power that seize upon such potentially productive/destructive products of science and choose to employ such artifacts for their own manipulatively evil purposes

We can call such reificative ontological aberration agential concretisation, being as it is the reification of the phenomenological apprehension of the actions of physical agents or events or happenings experienced or described by human agents. I rate philosophical argot as being the most prolifically abusive in the area of ontology and the spread of the erroneous physicalisation of activity. Traditional philosophy (with a few outstanding exceptions) is the seed-bed and progenitor of obfuscation, unreason and violence, in that it provides authoritative, academic support for irrationalism, and acquiesces in the continuance of paranormal, occultist, politico-religio reality-disconnectedness. Unlike religion which (it is admitted and relished by religionists) is based upon faith rather than rationality, philosophy is spoken of as the love of wisdom. Wisdom is often characterised as the wise application of experientially acquired, accumulated knowledge or erudition applied in order to enlighten with common sense and insight. Philosophers, who devote their lives to the pursuit of wisdom (becoming better knowers) are therefore more open to criticism. Personally I think professional philosophers, (apart from a few outstanding examples) particularly those funded and paid by the taxpayer in institutions of higher learning, should be rebuked for not spotting the most profound ontological dualistic mistake in all of philosophy and ontology - the fact that only acting actors exist and that the reification action is no more than a thingification of an existential modality of the the actor

When I censure or remonstrate against reificative philosophy or religion, etc. I am actually censuring the actual flesh and blood human beings concerned - not hiding behind the reificational curtain of some fictive domain-name such as Philosophy. Philosophy does not exist to be blamed, nor does academia - only the guilty philosophers and academicians exist.

Sadly these lovers of wisdom are for the most part agape with wonder or awe with the so-called wisdom of others. Rather than developing their own cognitive skills and passing on anything worthwhile to the taxpayers who pick up the bill- and helpfully confirming what actually exists, they devote more time to hermeneutically poring over and comparing the dead ideas of those who have gone before.

What help are they in the modern world where our own western reifico-preoccupied commodity obsessed culture is in danger of being overrun by a virulent form reifico-fascistic fanaticism which could end in the complete annihilation of mankind?

Our forefathers no doubt observed the ontic world around them with an intelligent, categorising eye. They considered the opinions of others, they classified those opinions, they analysed those societal and moral judgements regarding states of personal, societal and natural affairs. But they failed miserably in differentiating between non-existential events as such and whatever material objects happened to be ontic participants in such non-existent states of affairs.

They failed to understand (and we have inherited the misunderstanding) that ontologically speaking The Battle of Waterloo never existed. It was only the presence of the material entities which guaranteed that such an event could take place and be named. Without the particular Belgian terrain and that which it contained, plus the men, the horses and  the guns, etc. that were present on the spatial node we call  Sunday 18 June 1815 of the concatenational  continum - The Battle of Waterloo  would not have eventuated or have been witnessed by anybody in the first place.

In other words the ancient reificationalists observed, studied and recorded the causal objects or acted upon ontic entities which, by their proximity or interactive relationships comprised of what natural language calls: an event and faithfully reified those interactive dynamic synergies (movements, actions, responses, changes) into concrecities such as The Battle of Waterloo.

I blame the influence of religion here, for (particularly in historical times) the fiction of dualism was indoctrinated into people from birth onwards. In most human societies the levers of power were exercised via a mutually beneficent compact betwixt the holders of political, military and economic power - the throne, senate, the aristocratic assembly and the theocracy, etc.

In extreme circumstances any philosophical innovation, ontological radicalism, or scientific divergence from that which was considered important for the continuance of the power elite was, discouraged, banned and in some circumstances the offenders were murdered. Socrates, Bruno, Hypatia of Alexandria, Steve Biko, Martin Luther King are some well known ones we know of.

It is unusual for a philosopher to murder, Altusser murdered his philosopher-wife but he is the only one of whom I have details. The most notorious and infamous case of murderous intent was of course that of the Nazi transcendentalist Heidegger, who actually called for the extermination of millions of his fellow countrymen at a meeting of uniformed Nazis, which, naturally, entailed the deaths of many fellow philosophers. (see: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/faye.htm