[MD] The other side of reified

[david buchanan]

Marsha said:
Buddhist’s expanded meaning of reification: In Buddhist philosophy the concept of reification goes further.  Reification means treating any functioning phenomenon as if it were a real, permanent 'thing', rather than an impermanent process."


dmb says:
The MOQ goes just as far, specifically at the point where Pirsig is explaining James's radical empiricism and its positions with respect to subject and objects. As a matter of fact, James and Pirsig are both rightly called process philosophers. But you go even further. You go too far so that reification is part of the conceptualization process. This is just a ham-handed condemnation of all concepts. This is not only unsupported by the quotes you post, it is also a logical impossibility and the consequences of such of view is a moral nightmare. It fails every intellectual standard I can think of. AND you aim this nonsense at all the wrong targets.

If you were genuinely concerned about reification, you'd be barking up Ham's tree and you'd be wildly at odds with Krimel's scientific reductionism and with Bo, who thinks the MOQ is reality. They all reify the hell out of everything and they're hardly compatible with each other. But you think they're just swell and instead you're using a Buddhist critique of reification to push back against Pirsig and James, who are firmly opposed to reification and are firmly on the side of Buddhism. What an idiot! You're always barking up the wrong tree because you miss the point of everything, even your own evidence! Making sense just isn't on your list of priorities. Apparently, for you, this forum is just some kind of social club and you pick sides based on what's going to help or hurt your chances of becoming the prom queen - or whatever. (You're one of the most popular girls in this sentence!)  It's hard to imagine what kind of person would even find that respectable, let alone be persuaded by it. Haven't you ever noticed that nobody is buying your anti-intellectual nihilism? Why do you suppose that is? I guess you think that's my fault, thus your obsession with my "authority", (whatever that means). Or maybe you just want my attention so desperately that you're willing to the play the fool.