[MD] The reification issue completely misunderstood

[david buchanan]

> On Jun 7, 2011, at 12:49 PM, david buchanan wrote: As James and Pirsig both say, there must always be a discrepancy between concepts and reality because concepts are static and reality is dynamic. 

Marsha replied: In the MoQ Textbook, it states a correspondence between static quality and maya (illusion), "but only in the sense that it is illusory to believe that people and the objects of their world are permanent, independent and unchanging." 


dmb says:
You're barking up the wrong tree. Who are you talking to? Who believes that people and the objects of their world are permanent, independent and unchanging? Did I ever say anything remotely like that? How is such a belief relevant to the discrepancy between concepts and reality? 
And don't you see the implication of this textbook statement? If "objects" are taken as secondary concepts which are derived from experience rather than independent, changeless entities then the concept is not reified. The concept is not taken as anything more than a concept then there is nothing illusory about it. And the fact that there are such people proves that reification is not inherent to thinking. You quote such people and yet you continue with this hair-brained, logically impossible claim. 
(Not that Marsha will be able to see this, but this is how her argument does NOT add up.)

The dictionaries say reification is a conceptual error wherein something abstract is mistaken for something real and concrete.
Marsha says reification is interdependent with the conceptualization process.
But the concept and definition of "Reification" is itself a product of the conceptualization process.
If Marsha's assertion were true, the concept of "reification" would itself be reified and illusory.


In other words, she is using words and concepts to assert the idea that words and concepts depend on distortion and falsification. It's absurd. It's logically impossible. One can't correct an error by the application of more error. It's self-defeating and incoherent. It's like walking over to tell a person that our legs and feet can only ever take us away from persons. In polite company, it's called a performative contradiction.