[MD] Keep on duckin'

Sun May 29 08:34:08 PDT 2011

Ron, 

I think I have suggested that reification was either a part of the 
conceptualization process, or that there was a interdependency 
between conceptualization and reification. But if you would 
submit an explanation of the alleged contradiction, I might 
be able to explain.  Or not...  

Marsha

On May 29, 2011, at 9:19 AM, X Acto wrote:

> Hey Marsha,
> You do realize that these quotes conflict with the assertion that reification IS 
> conceptualization.
> 
> You may have won the battle but you lost the war in this regard.
> 
> just pointing that out.
> 
> -Ron
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>  
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: MarshaV <valkyr at att.net>
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Sent: Sun, May 29, 2011 4:36:30 AM
> Subject: Re: [MD] Keep on duckin'
> 
> 
> On May 28, 2011, at 11:38 AM, david buchanan wrote:
> 
>> dmb says:  
>> Again, I'll remind you that you repeatedly cited an enthusiastic William James 
>> fan to dispute William James. The quotes you post as evidence for your notion of 
>> reification do not support that notion at all. 
>> 
> 
> 
> Marsha:
> 
> Here's more...  
> 
> 
> "Everything in the world that we conceive of and experience is related to the 
> mind.  When that world is reified however, it appears to exist absolutely, in 
> its own right; and this mental distortion may lead one to wonder how nature can 
> be comprehensible to the human mind.  Einstein, who routed absolute space and 
> time from the universe, still clung to an absolute ontology.  The centrist view 
> presented here, which might be called _conceptual relativity_, fundamentally 
> challenges the realist ontological assumptions underlying virtually all of 
> Western science.  Theory, in the form of conceptual designation permeates our 
> experience.  As theory is not purely determined by some intrinsic nature o 
> reality, there is no one conceptual system that uniquely accounts for the myriad 
> of natural phenomena.  Objects exist relative to the theory-laden consciousness 
> that experiences them.
> 
> "From a centrists perspective, ontological absolutism is based on the mental 
> distortion known as reification.  Reification in science is quite similar to the 
> same process in everyday life.  This stands to reason, since scientific inquiry 
> itself bears so much in common with ordinary mental activity.  Einstein made the 
> following distinction between the two:  "The scientific way of forming concepts 
> differers from that which we use in our daily life, not basically, but merely in 
> the more precise definition of concepts and conclusions; more painstaking and 
> systematic choice of experimental material; and greater logical economy.
> 
> "The process of reification, as we have noted previously, forms the basis for 
> everyday realism, and it is present eve in young children.  According to the 
> child psychologist Jean Piaget, a child first constructs a concept related to 
> the world and then projects it out into the world.  The concept is externalized 
> so that it appears to be a perceptually given object or property, independent of 
> the subject's own mental activity.  As we can see from our own experience, the 
> phenomena that we perceive in the external world appear to exist independently 
> of our perceptions and conceptions.  Here is perhaps the most fundamental reason 
> for believing in an objective universe independent of consciousness:  that is 
> simply how the world appears.  But does the world in fact exist the way it 
> appears, or is its mode of existence incongruous with its mode of appearance?  
> 
> 
> "Everyday and scientific realism differ, however, in the types of things that 
> are reified.  Where as the former chiefly reifies objects and properties that 
> appear to our senses, the latter reifies the existence of noumenal entities that 
> lie behind appearances.  Thus, subatomic particles, electromagnetic fields, and 
> the zero-point energy of the vacuum are assumed to exist independently of the 
> theories in which they are conceived.  That is, they really exist "out there" in 
> the objective world, independent of human existence.
> 
> "The tendency of reification among mathematicians is particularly interesting.  
> Philip Davis and Reuben Hersh comment in their book 'Descartes' Dream: The World 
> According to Mathematics' that many modern mathematicians regard their 
> discipline as a system of deductive structures in which deduction moves from 
> axiom to conclusions, and the axioms are "simply playthings."  This attitude 
> suggests a formalists view of mathematics one the Davis and Hersh assert is 
> generally instilled into today's students.  Yet in a later chapter they claim 
> that nearly all mathematicians hold  Platonist conception of mathematics nearly 
> all the time.  This view asserts that mathematics exists independently of the 
> world; it exists prior to and apart from the universe, and and it will go on 
> even when the cosmos comes to an end. Thus, the world of mathematics exists 
> independently of the mathematician, whose job is to discover and record what is 
> already there.  What is this telling us?  It would seem th
> at most mathematicians, when they philosophize about mathematics, profess a 
> formalist view, but the rest of the time (especially when they are actually 
> doing mathematics) they revert to a realist stance.  This may well be true of 
> many scientists as well.  The natural tendency of reification, which we have had 
> since childhood, is extremely difficult to eradicate from our habits of thinking 
> and perceiving."
> 
>     (Wallace, B. Alan, 'Choosing Reality, : A Buddhist View of Physics and the 
> Mind',2003,pp.120-123)
> 
> 
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> 
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