Redness?

Redness?

20160506_135347 Colourized, my photo 

Preface

The review of the Pirie text was entry by entry. This was originally published on Blogger 20170725. Edited on Blogger, 20241222, for an entry on academia.edu.

PIRIE, MADSEN (2006)(2015) How To Win Every Argument, Bloomsbury, London.

Redness  

The fallacy of reification is also known as hypostatization. It consists in the supposition that certain words denote real things. (178). The 'redness' of the sunset, as example. Pirie reasons 'redness' is not present with a red sun, red ball, or red anything. (178).

The fallacy is turning descriptive qualities into real things. (178).

Perceived redness can vary from wavelengths. Oxford Science defines colour as the sensation produced when light of different wavelengths falls onto the human eye. (178). The visible spectrum varies continuously with wavelength ranges. (178). There is an abstract aspect to the human evaluation of colours and how each set of human eyes would interpret the sensations of light and colour.

I see dark red, you see red-blue, etcetera. It is not an error to describe the redness of something in subjective terms, but it should not be understood as objective terminology.

Reification occurs when it is assumed that the descriptive attributes are as real as the objects they depend on. (178).

Logically fallacious

'Reification (also known as: abstraction, concretism, fallacy of misplaced concreteness, hypostatisation)

Description: When an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity -- when an idea is treated as if had a real existence.

Example #1: How can you not want to go jogging? Look at that street -- it’s calling your name. It wants your feet pounding on it. “Jog on me!”'

'Fun Fact: Reification is similar to anthropomorphism, except that reification does not have to deal with human qualities.' 

'References: reification | literature | Britannica.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.britannica.com/topic/reification ---'

Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy 

Cited 

'Hypostatization 

The error of inappropriately treating an abstract term as if it were a concrete one. Also known as the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness and the Fallacy of Reification. 

Example: 'Nature decides which organisms live and which die. 

Nature isn’t capable of making decisions. The point can be made without reasoning fallaciously by saying: “Which organisms live and which die is determined by natural causes.” Whether a phrase commits the fallacy depends crucially upon whether the use of the inaccurate phrase is inappropriate in the situation. In a poem, it is appropriate and very common to reify nature, hope, fear, forgetfulness, and so forth, that is, to treat them as if they were objects or beings with intentions. In any scientific claim, it is inappropriate.' 

My example: 'Nature chooses the survival of the fittest'. My Reformed, biblical, Christian worldview, also views nature as not capable of making decisions. It is a finite creation of the infinite, eternal, triune God. Nature has various life, but is not a conscious, rational entity in itself.

Cited from Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy website

'References and Further Reading 

Eemeren, Frans H. van, R. F. Grootendorst, F. S. Henkemans, J. A. Blair, R. H. Johnson, E. C. W. Krabbe, C. W. Plantin, D. N. Walton, C. A. Willard, J. A. Woods, and D. F. Zarefsky, 1996. Fundamentals of Argumentation Theory: A Handbook of Historical Backgrounds and Contemporary Developments. Mahwah, New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers. 

Fearnside, W. Ward and William B. Holther, 1959. Fallacy: The Counterfeit of Argument. Prentice-Hall, Inc. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. 

Fischer, David Hackett., 1970. Historian’s Fallacies: Toward Logic of Historical Thought. New York, Harper & Row, New York, N.Y. 

This book contains additional fallacies to those in this article, but they are much less common, and many have obscure names. 

Groarke, Leo and C. Tindale, 2003. Good Reasoning Matters! 3rd edition, Toronto, Oxford University Press. 

Hamblin, Charles L., 1970. Fallacies. London, Methuen. 

Hansen, Has V. and R. C. Pinto., 1995. Fallacies: Classical and Contemporary Readings. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press. 

Huff, Darrell, 1954. How to Lie with Statistics. New York, W. W. Norton. 

Levi, D. S., 1994. “Begging What is at Issue in the Argument,” Argumentation, 8, 265-282. 

Schwartz, Thomas, 1981. “Logic as a Liberal Art,” Teaching Philosophy 4, 231-247. 

Walton, Douglas N., 1989. Informal Logic: A Handbook for Critical Argumentation. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. 

Walton, Douglas N., 1995. A Pragmatic Theory of Fallacy. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press. 

Walton, Douglas N., 1997. Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from Authority. University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press. 

Whately, Richard, 1836. Elements of Logic. New York, Jackson. 

Woods, John and D. N. Walton, 1989. Fallacies: Selected Papers 1972-1982. Dordrecht, Holland, Foris.'

Cited

'Website author

Bradley Dowden
California State University, Sacramento
U. S. A.' 

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Oxford Dictionary of Science, (2010), Sixth Edition, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

PIRIE, MADSEN (2006)(2015) How To Win Every Argument, Bloomsbury, London.