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 Abstractions, reifications, hypostatisations,
verbal nouns, abstract nouns, adjectival
nouns, gerunds, , etc., correspond to what
is meant in the sense of a speakers intention in communicating
opinions, judgements and ideas in relation
to an unspecified entity, or the generality
of entities with which the abstraction is
considered to be suitable or opportune and
with which it is semantically associative,
and which was/were responsible for their
original historical creation as linguistic
conveniences in the first place.
Abstractions are not
significations which correspond to actual
denotata which can be found in the real world,
but are designata which refer to unspecified
universalistic generalisations concerning
entities and events.
Abstractions are vitally
necessary insubstantial components of the
ideative meaning of all intentional utterances,
but are not themselves a part or property of the object encountered in perception,
i. e., LOVE is not a part or property of the lover, but reflects the manner or
the way that the generality of lovers exist
whilst they are in a state of loving - or,
put another way the state of loving in which
they exist whilst they feel emotions of love
or act out loving behaviour. But it is the lover that exists in the world and not the loving - the loving is simply the WAY that the
lover exists whilst he or she loves somebody.
There is usually an accurate identification
and absolute objectivity of meaningful correspondence
achieved between the proper noun: Bill Jones, and the real-world denotative entity which
corresponds to that signification. and is actually reading these words on the
screen at this moment. If there is more than one Bill Jones, then
the addition of a simple qualifier such as: of Earl Road, Memphis, or the artist, is often enough to establish the noun Bill Jones as a genuine referent (denotatum) of an actual existing human object referred
to by the linguistic expression: Bill Jones.
Most of us are aware and reconciled to the fact
that we will never in the future confront the irreal
object love anywhere in our experience. In this respect
we are already cognisant that love is not a real thing. If this is the case, then when we use expressions
such as: I hope to find love one day, or love doesnt obey the rules, then we are actually using the word love as a figure of speech in which the word
love is used to refer to an unspecified
human person that we will love and who hopefully
will love us in return.
We are aware that an irreal
object cannot exist, for that which is not
really an object cannot be a real-world existing
entity. WE know that to find love we must
find an actual real flesh and blood person
to love or to love us, for love is a state
or activity of human beings, not a thing,
and if we exclude human beings as possible
ultimate enactors or enablers of these states
or activities, we will fail to find, identify
and perhaps experience the actual originative
or seminal denotatum which gave rise to the
abstraction in the first place - and enjoy
the loving states and activities of loving
human beings.
If one attempts to subject any abstraction such as love to the same identificatory, designatory,
or denotational reduction as one can reduce
the noun Bill Jones to: he whom I am referring to, one proceeds down a torturous corridor of
designation or identification of the origin
of the significatum love until one finally arrives at the actual
source of the word - which turns out to be
a manner or state of behaviour of a real
flesh and blood human being, and it is human
beings and other real-world entities which
are the source and progenitors of all abstractions.
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All abstractions are ultimately reducible
to objects (including human objects) in the
world. But abstract or theoretical concepts
should never be reified or thingified,
or give the wrongful impression
that such linguistic descriptions of the
existential modality of described entities
are in themselves entities or quasi-entities.
Heidegger does precisely this, for he reifies
the gerundial phrase Dasein (being there or existence or being) which are the experiential or existential
modalities of entities and treats them
as if they also existed as some sort
of weird parallel ontological difference.
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Heidegger, often referred to as: The Philosopher
of Nazism, could never grasp this fact, but
rather reified the semantic structures of
these irreal objects [which inhere in the
phenomena and give them their communicative
sense.] into quasi-corporeal independent
actualities.
HIS GREATEST MISTAKE
His greatest ontological [and pathological]
mistake was of course to reify the existential
modality of the earthly presence of human entities and other real objects
into the notorious reificational object and
ontological perversion: BEING and its gerundially
humanised alter-ego DASEIN.
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Such intellectual vandalism was the
final step in his comportment away from reason
and responsible rationality to ontological
irrationality. His pyschopathic obsession
with abstractive unreason led inexorably
to his move towards his historical assignation
with so-called destiny - his membership
of the Nazi Party and his well known
fanatical adoration of the supremo of all
manipulative reificative abstraction - Adolf
Hitler.
Heidegger denied his wilful act of reification
of course, but all his works are couched
in such a dense, deliberately obfuscative
form of language that it achieves the semantic
effect of thingifying practically every abstract
noun one encounters in the whole corpus of his interminable boring
and excruciatingly juvenile texts. His teenage
student mistress Hannah Arendt characterised
him as being (in her words) "an inveterate
liar," so his denial of reification
is not to be unexpected or come as any surprise.
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Nominalists and eliminativists see nothing
wrong with applying the products of their
neurological activity to philosophical problems,
nor in communicating these ideas to others
via the meaningful linguistic codes that
we call language, and see no difficulty in
using denotataless linguistic coding, as
long as they themselves and their interlocutors
are aware that these abstractions are merely
instrumental for conveying meanings concerning
the activities and states of the real entities
from which they are ultimately derived and
associated.
In other words, the employment of abstraction
as a linguistically useful fiction in the
interests of brevity and in order to avoid
periphrasis and circumlocution
is fine - as long as the impression is not
given that the abstractions are instantiated
and textually treated as actual objects or
things that exist.
In many respects Heideggers phenomenology
can be described as obsessional preoccupation
with the irreal or unreal, in that what he
seems to be interested in is not so much
the of entities, but the factuality of nonexistent
phenomena including the term nothing.
Now for someone to be obsessed with that which doesnt exist over and above that which does exist seems to me to be a very abnormal kind of
ontologist.
The employment of the useful linguistic fictions
we call abstraction is fine in natural language or regular speech
in the bar or the bus-queue where it can
be used to convey meaning conveniently, quickly
and economically, but in areas of communication
such as philosophy, or even more so in science
it if foolish and counterproductive. In ontological
investigation, the unscholarly and unthinking
employment of reified abstraction is verging
upon the felonious, risible and unprofessional.
For a more in depth study of reification
and its corrosive effects on philosophy and
ontology see my: Philosophy and the Reification of the Unreal.
http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/reification_of_the_unreal.htm
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Evans Experientialism 
