Reification (also known as
concretism,
hypostatization, or
the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a
fallacy of
ambiguity, when an
abstraction (abstract
belief or hypothetical ) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event, or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something which is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: "
the map is not the territory".