[MD] Reading Lessons

[david buchanan]

Ian said:

...DMB you are reifying the word reify, attaching yourself to your understanding of it and defending it aggressively .... against another person. My perspective .... you, DMB and Marsha actually agree on this subject - what reification is for practical purposes - where you differ is in attitiude to presumed motivations for arguing. IMHO natch.


dmb says:
Why do you equivocate on every single topic? Why do you constantly dismiss every distinction and difference as an attitude problem? 

And, no. I certainly do NOT agree with Marsha on the issue of reification. As with the debate on truth, your failure to see the difference is YOUR failure. The MOQ says it's value all the way down but Marsha is pushing an anti-intellectual nihilism, a self-defeating relativism. The difference is actually quite huge. For her, reification is not just a conceptual error. It is inherent to all conceptualization. I think that's not just wrong, it's logically impossible and it leads to absurd conclusions. Why would anyone need "motivations" for disputing this foolish nihilism? Who doesn't want to defeat a bad idea and assert a better one? If that counts as aggression, then I guess philosophy is a contact sport. And I guess your role is to stand on the sidelines and tell the players not to play? To tell the players they're all on the same team? Seems pretty mixed-up to me.