Abstract
At the core of anthropomorphism lies a false positive cognitive bias to over-attribute the pattern of the human body and/or mind. Anthropomorphism is independently discussed in various disciplines, is presumed to have deep biological roots, but its cognitive bases are rarely explored in an integrative way. Conversely, I present an inclusive, multifaceted interdisciplinary approach to refine the psychological bases of mental anthropomorphism. I have integrated 13 conceptual dissections of folk finalistic reasoning into four psychological inference systems (physical, design, basic-goal, and belief stances); the latter three are truly teleological and thus prone to anthropomorphisms. I then have integrated the genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive empirical evidence that converges to support the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems prone to anthropomorphisms is framed as an evolved design feature to avoid harmful ancestral contexts. Nowadays, these stances easily engage with scientific reasoning about bio-evolutionary matters with both negative and positive consequences. Design, basic-goal, and belief stances benefit biology by providing cognitive foundations, expressing a high-powered explanatory system, promoting functional generalization, fostering new research questions and discoveries, enabling metaphorical/analogical thinking and explaining didactically with brevity. Hence, it is neither feasible nor advantageous to completely eliminate teleology from biology. Instead, we should engage with the eight classes of problems in bio-philosophy and bio-education that relate to the three stances: types of anthropomorphism, variety of misunderstandings, misleading appeal, legitimacy controversy, gateway to mysticism, total prohibition and its backfire effect. Recognizing the distinction among design, basic-goal, and belief stances helps to elucidate much of the logic underlying these issues, so that it enables a much more detailed taxonomy of anthropomorphisms, and organizes the various misunderstandings about evolution by natural selection. It also offers a solid psychological grounding for anchoring definitions and terminology. This tripartite framework also shed some light on how to better deal with the over-reactive stances in bio-education, by organizing previous pedagogical strategies and by suggesting new possibilities to be tested. Therefore, this framework constitutes a promising approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms and to further support regulating and clarifying teleology and anthropomorphism in biology.
Highlights
The search for pertinent pattern is the world is ubiquitous among animals, is one of the main brain tasks and is crucial for survival and reproduction
All of these mistakes mostly were influenced by basic-goal and belief stances. They combined incorrect underlying premises about mechanisms and deep-seated cognitive biases (Gregory, 2009). These findings indicate that important causes of widespread misunderstanding about natural selection are cognitive/psychological (Kelemen, 2012; Varella et al, 2013; Blancke et al, 2014)
I have presented a promising multifaceted approach to advance the debate regarding the psychological underpinnings of anthropomorphisms, to further support the materialistic and qualified lifting of the taboos regarding teleology and anthropomorphism in biology, philosophy and education, and to improve on pedagogical strategies aiming on maximize its positive sides and minimizing its negative aspects
Summary
The search for pertinent pattern is the world is ubiquitous among animals, is one of the main brain tasks and is crucial for survival and reproduction. It was carried to the cave, possibly because of the hominid’s capacity toward anthropomorphic facial pareidolia being activated by the suggestive form of the pebble Those tendencies occur respectively when we see specific objects, meanings, human forms/minds, non-human animal forms/minds, plant forms, or fungus forms where there is only vague similarity or none.
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