frank scott writes:
> Some people - usually marxists - use the word "reification" to indicate
> a thought or idea or concept which is treated as though it exists in
> the material world...could this be the same as "instantiation"...??
No. To instantiate means to create an instance of. To create an
instance of something is to reify something, but that is not
pathological nor an error. Reification is often used as a label to
describe an error in which a person comes to believe that the object
of an idea exists simply because he can talk about the idea.
Psychiatrists use this concept of reification. I don't know about
marxists, although Groucho got a lot of mileage out of it.
martin
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