> As there is no evidence at all in support of any level of anthropomorphizing, and a massive dataset against, denial of anthropomorphizing seems accurate, and the alternative not at all accurate.

Anthropomorphism originally referred to the giving a human like form to God. Later, it was repurposed to apply to attributing human like characters to animals, plants and even planets (Solaris). Modern psychologists have an entirely different viewpoint, as shown by these excerpts:


Students of comparative psychology are taught that anthropomorphism is a bias that we have to overcome and has no place in science. While standard scientific method agrees that scientists should avoid unjustified claims, I think the principle does more harm than good, and it should be discarded in favor of more general principles of scientific investigation. Anthropomorphism is understood simply as “the attribution of human qualities to other animals, usually with the implication it is done without sound justification.” 

There is no preempirical way to identify anthropomorphic properties. If it is a property unique to humans, then we could agree that that property ought not to be used to explain nonhuman behavior. However, to justify the claim that a property is uniquely human is to say we looked but do not see it elsewhere. Such claims should be the result of scientific investigation, not principles for starting an investigation. Anti-anthropomorphism either begs the question or redundantly instructs us to avoid false attributions.

It is good to be careful with words and to define our terms. But if we invent new words for nonhuman animals and keep old words for human beings, then we are going to introduce unnecessary problems when trying to draw comparisons between humans and other animals. 

Monica Gagliano presented a paper called “Animal-like learning in Mimosa pudica.”  Her paper at that point had been rejected by ten journals, but not because of a lack of scientific rigor. Rather, the editors rejected her use of the term “learning,” and she had refused to revise the language. Gagliano: “Unless we use the same language to describe the same behavior we can’t compare it.” This is as true of plants and animals as it is of human and nonhuman animals. 

Consciousness, or sentience – the capacity to feel – has been largely left out of the textbooks as unscientific and harmful to the practice of science. Trying to understand what animals see, feel, and think will facilitate research. Recognizing this can help us to ask rich questions about animal capacities and better get to know “the endless minds most beautiful of the other creatures on this planet, what they share and how they are unique, how and why they might have evolved.”

Andrews, K. (2020). How to study animal minds. Cambridge University Press.

PLB

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