Fallacy?

Reification

An abstraction is spoken of as if it were an agent that can choose, design or invent.

Also called: Personification · Hypostatisation

The test

Rewrite the sentence without the agent language. Is there still an explanation left?

Biologists speak of selection “favouring” a trait, and genes “wanting” to spread. Used carefully, these are harmless metaphors; Darwin himself defended the phrase natural selection as one. The problem comes when the metaphor does the explaining. A process with no foresight is described as if it had foresight, and the reader is left with the impression that the hard part has been done.

The same caution applies to critics. Saying that a mutation “lost information” explains nothing until the measure of information is named.

Seen on both sides

In mainstream arguments
It would be reification to say that natural selection “designed” or “invented” a structure, and leave it there, as though naming the process explained the result.
In critical arguments
It would be reification to treat information as a substance that must be “added” or “lost,” without saying how it is measured in the case at hand.
Not a fallacy when

The agent language is shorthand for a mechanism that is spelled out elsewhere and can be checked.

Diagnosed on this site

Not yet diagnosed in any pillar or claim card.

Further reading

  1. Darwin C. On the Origin of Species, later editions, chapter 4, where Darwin defends “natural selection” as a metaphor.