Misplaced Concreteness
Other Names
Description
This is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete, real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is just an idea as if it were a real thing and then arriving at conclusions that are mistakenly based on this error.
Example
Never tempt fate, it will always come back to hit you.
The expression "tempting fate" means to take risks, but fate is not actually a person that will harbor a grudge against you and wait around for an opportunity to take its revenge. Fate is an abstract notion, not a real person, and some risks are worth taking.
Famous Examples
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Modern medicine, for all its advances, knows less than 10 percent of what your body knows instinctively.
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For thousands of years, human beings have been obsessed with beauty, truth, love, honor, altruism, courage, social relationships, art, and God. They all go together as subjective experiences, and it’s a straw man to set God up as the delusion. If he is, then so is truth itself or beauty itself.
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Although he hasn't sexually assaulted someone, he is a giant penis and he's been flaunting it out in public for months in front of kids and families and as far as I know that is indecent exposure.
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Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.
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There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. -
Rick: Those are procedurally-generated clouds Beth. That river is a rainbow, literally. Come on I put real elbow grease into this place.
Beth: You're supposed to put elbow grease into your daughter.
Rick: Gross.
Context: Rick and Morty season 3 episode 9 - The ABC's of Beth -
Beauty isn't in the eye of the beholder. I've checked. There's nothing in there but veins and goo.
Context: The Colbert Report (television show) -
If the eyes are the window to the soul, then why do they hurt when I spray them with Windex?
Context: The Colbert Report (television show)
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