[MD] Reifying carrots, causality and the law of gravity

[david buchanan]

John said:
... "cause and effect" are human tools of understanding, correct?  Tools that work reliably most of the time.  But don't take the concept fundamentally.  That would be bad metaphysics, no? Or as dmb likes to put it (prolly cuz he thinks it makes him sound cool) "reify." ...I mean, everybody does, right? .. Even tho it's admittedly degenerate,  we all reify. Ironically tho!  See?  That makes all the difference.

dmb says:

If all conceptualizations were reifications and if everybody does it, then reification is just another word for conceptualization. If reified concepts include any and all concepts, then the word "reify" has no meaning. 

Take the law of gravity, for example. The reification of that idea means that we mistake the idea for a concrete reality. That does NOT mean that gravity is then conceived as something physical or as something made of cement. But the law of gravity is reified in the sense that the law is considered to be the "real" reality behind all the falling and orbiting objects. This is also true of causality. As ideas used to predict what will happen in future experience, these are extremely good ideas. But reification means believing that these forces really exist, somehow, apart from the experiences they describe. That's reification. That's Platonism. That's scientific objectivity. And that's NOT how we have to take it. We can say that such an understanding is an error. And that's how Pirsig begins. From ZAMM, page 40:

"What I'm driving at is the notion that before the beginning of the earth, before the sun and the stars were formed, before the primal generation of everything, the law of gravity existed. Sitting there, having no mass of its own, no energy of its own, not in anyone's mind because there wasn't anyone, not in space because there was no space either, not anywhere-this law of gravity still existed? If that law of gravity existed, I honestly don't know what a thing has to do to be nonexistent. It seems to me that law of gravity has passed every test of nonexistence there is. You cannot think of a single attribute of nonexistence that the law of gravity didn't have. And yet it is still 'common sense' to believe that it existed. 
Well, I predict that if you think about it long enough you will find yourself going round and round and round and round until you finally reach only one possible, rational, intelligent conclusion. The law of gravity and gravity itself did not exist before Isaac Newton. No other conclusion makes sense. And what that means is that the law of gravity exists nowhere except in people's heads! It's a ghost! We are all of us very ignorant and conceited about running down other people's ghosts but just as ignorant and barbaric and superstitious about our own."