Related materials: anthropomorphism, homuncular fallacy, teleologization, retrospectivization, property, form as a condition of description, ontological substitution in neuroscientific rhetoric.
Introduction
Description makes it possible to retain recurring relationships, changes, and ways of organization. To do so, a subject identifies a distinction, gives it a name, and uses the resulting form in subsequent reasoning. A problem arises when the origin of the form ceases to be visible and the introduced category begins to function as an independent part of the reality being described.
Reification concerns precisely this transition. It allows us to identify the moment at which a descriptive instrument imperceptibly changes its status: initially it organizes what is observed, then it is declared a property or entity of the object itself, and finally it returns to the reasoning as the cause of the observed event.
Definition
Reification is the transformation of a distinction, relationship, category, function, or mode of description into an independent entity or an inherent property of the reality being described.
Its minimal structure:
observed change
→ distinction made
→ name assigned to the distinction
→ origin of the name forgotten
→ name taken to be the object's structure
The complete form of the error appears when the outcome of this movement is used to explain the initial event:
an event made it possible to introduce a category
→ the category is placed inside the event
→ the event is explained through the action of the category
Thus, a description of a process turns into an object used to explain that process.
Example of Competition
Suppose that, as two processes unfold together, one pattern of activity becomes stronger and the other weaker. This configuration can be briefly called competition.
At the first step, the assertion is:
changes occur as though the two processes were competing.
Here, “competition” denotes a way of comparing several observable changes. It brings them together into a single model but has not yet been designated an independent acting mechanism.
Then the shorthand may lose its conditional character:
the processes compete.
After that, the category returns as a cause:
one pattern weakens because the processes compete.
But the word “competition” was introduced on the basis of precisely the strengthening and weakening that it is now supposed to explain. Unless a distinct mechanism is presented behind the word, the explanation becomes circular:
why did one pattern strengthen while the other weakened?
→ because they were competing
how do we know they were competing?
→ one strengthened while the other weakened
The name of a configuration of events has taken the place of the cause of that configuration.
Four Levels Conflated by Reification
For precise analysis, it is useful to distinguish four levels.
1. What Is Observed
Events and dependencies are recorded:
- the activity of one process increases;
- the activity of another decreases;
- changing the conditions affects both quantities;
- a particular sequence recurs.
2. Descriptive Form
The subject combines events through a category:
such dynamics will be called competition.
The category allows cases to be compared and a model to be constructed.
3. Ontological Assertion
The descriptive form is transferred into the object:
competition exists between the processes as a relationship inherent in them.
This is no longer shorthand for observations but an assertion about what exists.
4. Causal Explanation
The category is assigned explanatory action:
the changes occurred because of competition.
A transition between these levels can be justified, but choosing a word does not itself accomplish that transition. The predictive usefulness of a category does not prove its independent existence either.
Reification Is Not Identical to Naming
Without names, we could neither retain relationships nor return to them in thought. Nouns, abstractions, and models are not errors in themselves.
We can speak of memory, intelligence, the market, society, selection, or competition as long as we preserve an answer to the question:
what exactly was distinguished, and which observed relationships does this name retain?
Reification begins not with the appearance of a noun, but with the loss of the boundary between three positions:
what happens;
how the subject distinguished it;
what is asserted about the structure of what happens.
Thus, banning abstract words does not eliminate reification. The same word can be used as a transparent designation for a model or as the name of an imaginary entity.
From Metaphor to Cause
A metaphor transfers an already familiar form onto a new event:
these processes behave as if they are competing.
Such a transfer can be productive. It highlights a similarity and helps generate testable expectations. In itself, it does not yet assert identity between the source of the metaphor and the new subject matter.
Reification arises when the trace of the transfer disappears:
observed change
→ “as if competition”
→ “competition”
→ “competition is inherent in the objects”
→ “competition causes the change”
A metaphor becomes a forgotten metaphor, then a property of the object, and finally a causal mechanism. The error lies not in the initial comparison but in the unestablished transitions between these statuses.
Reification of a Relationship
Relationships are particularly susceptible to reification. Victory, superiority, value, risk, status, similarity, and conflict do not exist as isolated things inside a single object, but as forms of relating.
For example, the assertion
this option is better
presupposes a criterion, alternatives, and a position relative to which the comparison is made. If all this disappears, “better” begins to look like an internal property of the option.
A relationship collapses into a predicate and then the predicate into an entity:
X is preferable to Y by criterion C for subject S
→ X is better
→ superiority resides in X
After this collapse, the origin of the evaluation is difficult to recover because language presents the result of a distinction as a ready-made property of the object.
Hypostatization as a Related Term
Hypostatization usually means granting an abstraction independent existence. Within this archive, it does not require a separate concept until a distinction has been established that cannot be retained within the concept of reification.
A narrower formulation may be used:
hypostatization is the moment of reification at which an abstraction acquires the status of an independently existing bearer of properties or action.
For example, grammatically convenient expressions such as “history demanded,” “society decided,” or “the market punished” can transform a designation for a multitude of processes into a single actor. However, the presence of an abstract grammatical subject does not yet prove an error: it is necessary to establish whether it is shorthand for a demonstrated mechanism or replaces that mechanism with an invented acting whole.
Reification and Anthropomorphism
Reification is the more general operation. It can affect any category, including categories unrelated to humans. Anthropomorphism occurs in a more specific case: a human form of action, experience, or subjectivity is transferred into an object.
The phrase
neurons compete
may contain both operations.
- It is reification if the observer’s category of competition is taken to be a relationship inherent in neurons themselves.
- It is anthropomorphism if, along with the word, the structure of opposing subjects, their goals, choices, or desire to win is transferred.
Neither automatically follows from the other. Formal “competition” between two algorithms may be a strictly defined model without human intentions. Conversely, desire or decision may be attributed to a system without turning the word “desire” into a separate entity.
Why a Reified Explanation Appears Substantive
A reified category has already collected many events into a compact form. Consequently, using it again creates the impression that an explanation has been added to the observation.
disparate changes
→ receive a common name
→ the name retains the entire configuration
→ repeating the name is experienced as revealing the cause
But the reasoning may remain informationally stationary. Statements such as “the system strives for stability,” “the market restored equilibrium,” or “the brain made a decision” explain an event only when an organization can be demonstrated behind them that does not already presuppose what must be explained.
How to Examine an Explanation
Suspicion of reification requires restoring a term’s origin, not prohibiting its use.
Useful questions include:
- Which events were observed before the category was introduced?
- Which distinction groups them under one name?
- Does the category denote an observed dependency, a model, or an independent mechanism?
- What separate grounds support the transition to an assertion about the structure of reality?
- Can the causal explanation be unpacked without merely repeating the original observation in different words?
- What would change if the reified noun were removed from the sentence?
For example:
“memory preserved the image”
→ which processes enabled the subject to reproduce or recognize the image later?
“the system chose stability”
→ which interactions make certain states more persistent or probable?
“competition weakened the connection”
→ what change in one quantity causally alters the other, and under what conditions?
After such unpacking, the term can remain as convenient shorthand. What changes is not the vocabulary but its ontological status.
Boundary of the Critique
Criticism of reification does not prove that there is nothing behind a category. The fact that a relationship was distinguished and named by a subject does not imply that the regularity observed is arbitrary or imaginary.
Two propositions must be maintained simultaneously:
a category need not be an independent thing in reality;
the recurrence it distinguishes need not be merely the subject's fantasy.
Therefore, exposing the origin of a concept does not replace investigation of its subject matter. It merely prevents the outcome of a distinction from being imperceptibly passed off as the preexisting structure of the world.
Brief Formula
Reification occurs when the form through which a subject distinguished what is happening is placed inside what happens as its own entity, property, or cause.
Its complete cycle:
event
→ distinction
→ name
→ forgetting the name's origin
→ property or entity
→ causal explanation of the original event
Overcoming reification consists not in abandoning categories but in preserving the distinction between what is observed, the way it is described, and the assertion about what exists.
