The Media’s Pitching Deck of Conflicting Standards It’s time to revisit the National Defense Authorization Act, which allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without due process or respect for habeas corpus. This is a provision that must be repealed as soon as possible or simply declared unconstitutional. Jim Babka from www.downsizedc.org joins us. Mid-show John reports a number of significant news stories unfolding this week. Then we’re on to issues of free speech with a look at the growing effort to penalize criticism of Islam by preventing a definition of the relationship between Islam and terrorism. Former CIA officer Claire Lopez at the Center for Security Policy (www.csp.org) guests on the program. John’s boralogue frames the show for today with a breakdown of how the media’s constant double standard woks, including rule changes when circumstances don’t suit them. Reification _ attributing an absolute definitive characteristic to something abstract. Otherwise known as the Fallacy of Ambiguity. Examples: “Love is blind.” “Justice is impartial.” “Evil has no conscience.” This is closely related to the Equivocation Fallacy by altering the definition of a word, term or object within an argument. Assigning human qualities to inanimate objects or abstract composites is called anthropomorphization. Anthropos meaning man and morphos meaning to change into. How we describe things indicates what we believe about them. We sometimes use word pictures to convey to others how we see the world around us. If we draw a literal comparison between philosophical abstracts and objects or intentions, we risk sending the wrong message. It’s precisely this method of disinformation that makes reification dangerous in media and debate. The one using reification attempts to incorrectly paint a word picture to bias or taint the truth.
Fallacy of the Week – Reification
Saturday, 14 January 2012
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