Hypostatization

Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical ) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: "the map is not the territory".

Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (just like metonymy for instance), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy.

From Latin res ("thing") and -fication, a suffix related to facere ("to make"). Thus reification can be loosely translated as "thing-making"; the turning of something abstract into a concrete thing or object.

Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as "facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will".

Reification may derive from an inborn tendency to simplify experience by assuming constancy as much as possible.

According to Alfred North Whitehead, one commits the fallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion, or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality: "There is an error; but it is merely the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete. It is an example of what might be called the 'Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness.'" Whitehead proposed the fallacy in a discussion of the relation of spatial and temporal location of objects. He rejects the notion that a concrete physical object in the universe can be ascribed a simple spatial or temporal extension, that is, without reference to its relations to other spatial or temporal extensions.

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