Relation To Other Fallacies
Pathetic fallacy (also known as anthropomorphic fallacy or anthropomorphization) is a specific type of reification. Just as reification is the attribution of concrete characteristics to an abstract idea, a pathetic fallacy is committed when those characteristics are specifically human characteristics, especially thoughts or feelings. Pathetic fallacy is also related to personification, which is a direct and explicit ascription of life and sentience to the thing in question, whereas the pathetic fallacy is much broader and more allusive.
The animistic fallacy involves attributing personal intention to an event or situation.
Reification fallacy should not be confused with other fallacies of ambiguity:
- Accentus, where the ambiguity arises from the emphasis (accent) placed on a word or phrase
- Amphiboly, a verbal fallacy arising from ambiguity in the grammatical structure of a sentence
- Composition, when one assumes that a whole has a property solely because its various parts have that property
- Division, when one assumes that various parts have a property solely because the whole has that same property
- Equivocation, the misleading use of a word with more than one meaning
Read more about this topic: Reification (fallacy)
Famous quotes containing the words relation to and/or relation:
“The adolescent does not develop her identity and individuality by moving outside her family. She is not triggered by some magic unconscious dynamic whereby she rejects her family in favour of her peers or of a larger society.... She continues to develop in relation to her parents. Her mother continues to have more influence over her than either her father or her friends.”
—Terri Apter (20th century)
“Parents ought, through their own behavior and the values by which they live, to provide direction for their children. But they need to rid themselves of the idea that there are surefire methods which, when well applied, will produce certain predictable results. Whatever we do with and for our children ought to flow from our understanding of and our feelings for the particular situation and the relation we wish to exist between us and our child.”
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