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. 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 empirically integrated the cross-disciplinary genetic, neural, cognitive, psychiatric, developmental, comparative and evolutionary/adaptive evidence that converge supporting the nature of the distinct stances. The over-reactive calibration of the three teleological systems 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 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. (shrink)

The complex relationships between humans and AI-empowered machines have created and inspired new products and services as well as controversial debates, fiction and entertainment, and last but not least, a striving and vital field of research. The convergence between the two categories of entities has created stimulating concepts and theories in the past, such as the uncanny valley, machinization of humans through datafication, or humanization of machines, known as anthropomorphization. In this article, we identify a new gap in the relational (...) interaction between humans and AI triggered by commercial interests, making use of AI through advertisement, marketing, and corporate communications. Our scope is to broaden the field of AI and society by adding the business-society-nexus. Thus, we build on existing research streams of machinewashing and the analogous phenomenon of greenwashing to theorize about the humanwashing of AI-enabled machines as a specific anthropomorphization notion. In this way, the article offers a contribution to the anthropomorphization literature conceptualizing humanwashing as a deceptive use of AI-enabled machines aimed at intentionally or unintentionally misleading organizational stakeholders and the broader public about the true capabilities that AIEMs possess. (shrink)

Previous research has shown that the more individuals view observable entities as animate, the more those entities are associated with having psychological and physiological experiences. This study examined the relationship between children's animistic and anthropomorphic reasoning for concepts of unobservable scientific (i.e., germ) and religious (i.e., God) entities. This study further explored how children's conceptions vary according to the social learning opportunities (i.e., discourse, rituals) parents reportedly create. Parent–child dyads with young children from diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds participated. Three (...) central findings emerged. First, children readily associated God with psychobiological characteristics but did not do so to the same extent for germs. Second, children applied more psychobiological properties to both entity types when they believed that the entity was animate. Third, engaging in rituals and discourse with parents was indirectly related to children's concepts of God but not related to their concepts of germs. Overall, this study presented support for a connection between children's animistic and anthropomorphic reasoning for unobservable entities, and an indirect effect of cultural input on this reasoning. The implications of these findings will be discussed. (shrink)

Globally, robots can be described as some sets of moving parts that are dedicated to a task while using their own energy. Yet, humans commonly qualify those machines as being intelligent, autonomous or being able to learn, know, feel, make decisions, etc. Is it merely a way of talking or does it mean that robots could eventually be more than a complex set of moving parts? On the one hand, the language of robotics allows multiple interpretations (leading sometimes to misreading (...) or confusion in various contexts). On the other hand, the status of robots is challenged more and more by technical achievements and humans’ own empirical beliefs. In this paper, we follow a linguistic approach in order to explore the relevance of these words when talking about robots. Since we note that the words impose themselves (even if opposed), we discuss the efficiency of a rhetorical strategy in order to work with such a lexicon in robotics. More precisely, we explore the argumentative technique of the dissociation of notions through the study of a practical case: the case of robot lawn mowers versus hedgehogs. (shrink)

In this article, I explore how researchers’ metaphysical commitments can be conducive—or unconducive—to progress in animal cognition research. The methodological dictum known as Morgan’s Canon exhorts comparative psychologists to countenance the least mentalistic fair interpretation of animal actions. This exhortation has frequently been misread as a blanket condemnation of mentalistic interpretations of animal behaviors that could be interpreted behavioristically. But Morgan meant to demand only that researchers refrain from accepting default interpretations of (apparent) actions until other fair interpretations have been (...) duly considered. The Canon backfired largely because of Morgan’s background metaphysical commitment to a univocal, hierarchical, and anthropocentric account of cognitive architecture. I make the case that, going forward, comparative psychologists would do well to pair judicious use of Morgan’s Canon with an openness to the existence of non-humanlike animal minds comprising phenomena belonging to distinct cognitive and folk psychological ontologies. And I argue that this case gives us pragmatic reason to reconcile deep—e.g., psychofunctionalist—and superficial—e.g., dispositionalist—approaches to the metaphysics of belief. (shrink)

Human beings frequently attribute anthropomorphic features, motivations and behaviors to animals, artifacts, and natural phenomena. Historically, many interpretations of this attitude have been provided within different disciplines. What most interpretations have in common is distinguishing children’s manifestations of this attitude, which are considered “natural”, from adults’ occurrences, which must be explained by resorting to particular circumstances. In this article, I argue that anthropomorphism is not grounded in specific belief systems but rather in interaction. In interaction, a nonhuman entity assumes a (...) place that generally is attributed to a human interlocutor, which means that it is independent of the beliefs that people may have about the nature and features of the entities that are anthropomorphized. This perspective allows us to explain the problems that emerge if we consider anthropomorphism as a belief: (i) adults under certain circumstances may anthropomorphize entities even if they perfectly know that these entities have no mental life; (ii) according to the situation, the same entity may be anthropomorphized or treated as an object; (iii) there is no consistency among the entities that are anthropomorphized; (iv) there is individual variability in anthropomorphization, and this variability derives from affective states rather than from different degrees of knowledge about the entity that is anthropomorphized or greater or lesser naivety of the person who anthropomorphizes. From this perspective, anthropomorphism is a basic human attitude that begins in infants and persists throughout life. The difference between adults and children is not qualitative but rather a matter of complexity. (shrink)