I have a somewhat more specific idea in mind when I write about reification in posts.
I treat reification as the process of taking experience and turning it into concept. That is to say, reification is the process that happens when we carve the world up into boxes to distinguish one part from another. Otherwise stated, it’s the process by which we draw a map of the territory.
This reflects the etymology: to reify is to make into a thing. Things exist only in the map once we’ve drawn the line to build an abstraction over a pattern.
This seems subtly different from your definition, which implies to me a possibility of reifying something by degrees (this thing is “more reified” than that thing), whereas I see reification as a binary, but the reification may be more or less precise and thus feel “more reified” because it’s more precise than other things.
I have a somewhat more specific idea in mind when I write about reification in posts.
I treat reification as the process of taking experience and turning it into concept. That is to say, reification is the process that happens when we carve the world up into boxes to distinguish one part from another. Otherwise stated, it’s the process by which we draw a map of the territory.
This reflects the etymology: to reify is to make into a thing. Things exist only in the map once we’ve drawn the line to build an abstraction over a pattern.
This seems subtly different from your definition, which implies to me a possibility of reifying something by degrees (this thing is “more reified” than that thing), whereas I see reification as a binary, but the reification may be more or less precise and thus feel “more reified” because it’s more precise than other things.