Read the passage and answer the question.
A philosopher critiques the habit of treating markets as if they were natural phenomena. Commentators sometimes speak of “the market” as though it were a weather system: it rises, it falls, it punishes, it rewards. This language suggests inevitability, implying that no one is responsible for outcomes such as unaffordable housing or precarious employment.
The philosopher calls this habit reification. An abstract set of relationships—laws, contracts, institutional practices—is treated as a thing with its own agency. When reification occurs, policy choices disappear behind the apparent objectivity of “market forces.” A rent increase becomes something that happened, not something enabled by zoning rules, tax incentives, and landlord-tenant law.
Reification, the philosopher argues, is rhetorically convenient. It allows decision-makers to claim neutrality: they are not choosing, they are merely responding. But the convenience is purchased at a cost. If the market is imagined as a thing, then democratic deliberation about how to structure economic life seems futile.
The philosopher concludes that resisting reification requires restoring visibility to the human-made components of economic order. Markets do not float above society; they are assembled. Recognizing this does not guarantee agreement on policy, but it makes responsibility harder to evade.
As used in the passage, reification most nearly means:
- treating an abstract system as if it were a concrete thing with independent agency (correct answer)
- carefully measuring economic variables to improve predictive accuracy
- reforming institutions through gradual compromise and negotiation
- rejecting all markets in favor of purely local barter systems
Explanation: This question tests meaning-in-context vocabulary by asking how the philosopher uses 'reification' regarding market discourse. The meaning is inferred from how the word functions in the author's argument about treating abstractions as things. The surrounding context signals meaning through definition: 'An abstract set of relationships...is treated as a thing with its own agency' and the example of speaking about markets as if they were weather systems. Choice A correctly matches this as 'treating an abstract system as if it were a concrete thing with independent agency.' Choice B fails by focusing on measurement, missing the conceptual transformation at issue. A transferable strategy is to identify the philosophical error being named—here, reification means mistaking human-made systems for natural objects with independent existence.