>[!abstract] >**Vicious abstractionism** (or **vicious intellectualism**) is a criticism of the type of [[reification]] found in Kant's and Hegel's idealistic philosophies. It was coined by James William, the "father of American psychology". >[!related] >- **North** (upstream): [[Reification]] >- **West** (similar): — >- **East** (different): — >- **South** (downstream): — >[!quote] >Let me give the name of "vicious abstractionism" to a way of using concepts which may be thus described: We conceive a concrete situation by singling out some salient or important feature in it, and classing it under that; then, instead of adding to its previous characters all the positive consequences which the new way of conceiving it may bring, we proceed to use our concept privatively; reducing the originally rich phenomenon to the naked suggestions of that name abstractly taken, treating it as a case of "nothing but" that concept, and acting as if all the other characters from out of which the concept is abstracted were expunged. Abstraction, functioning in this way, becomes a means of arrest far more than a means of advance in thought. ... The viciously privative employment of abstract characters and class names is, I am persuaded, one of the great original sins of the rationalistic mind ([[William, 1909]], p. 135–136). ![[related.base|no-toolbar]]