History: reification

Source of version: 1 (current)

An issue associated with Korzybski (whose slogan, "The Map Is Not The Territory", has found a home in sci-fi lore) but such questions can be found even as far back as Augustine. Of course, the most extreme form of this --identical with ((Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis|Sapir-Whorf)) taken literally-- is obviously false: we DO perceive things we don't have a name for, nor are we bound to believe that things exist merely because we have words for them. But it is good to be able to refer to this tendency succinctly. "Reification" is a feature of several mental illnesses (although this concept itself is a bit of a reification--see Foucault), and insofar as it often accompanies severely ideological political stances, there may eventually develop a consensus that these are not two separate phenomena, one treatable by medicine and the other requiring such accommodations as may prove fatal to democratic societies,--but one. And one is also allowed to ask the question: what would "Lojbanic reification" be?