What are the dangers of anthropomorphism?

Question

Anthropomorphism is the human tendency to apply human traits to nonhuman things. An example of this is how animal cartoon characters have hands, talk, and walk upright. A danger of anthropomorphism is how people like PETA fight for animal rights when animals do not have the same higher brain functions as humans and they are not human at all. What are some other dangers of applying human traits to nonhuman things?

Answer 1

Other dangers? Well, one danger is that people will study primatology in such a way that they waste their lives studying the social structure of populations of apes and in turn bore the shite out of intro anthro students while gaining no valuable knowledge about humans or human evolution. Ya, might as well be studying the politics of a house cat.

Answer 2

Just look what "Bambi" has done to the hunting industry !

Answer 3

Well I think that it is a mistake not to acknowledge that cruelty to animals exist and is fundamentally wrong.

But a danger of anthropormorphizing is it is a fallacy in logic, a flaw in reasoning.

Answer 4

I'm not sure that I'd agree that trying to advance animal rights is a danger of any sort, unless you're a rancher.  And PETA members don't want animals t ohave all of the same rights as ourselves, just a few simple, sensible ones.  We've already outlawed animal cruelty.

But one danger of having your chicken Mcnuggets dance around with smiley faces on is that it removes us further from the realities of what our food is, how it is produced, what the real costs are, etc.  The less we know about that, the farther we move into the territory of ecologically unsustainable factory-type farms.  It makes us anything but mindful of the life that it once was, and subtracts the notion that it should have been raised with any sort of dignity.  You don't need to burden a 5-yr old with that or anything, but it infantilizes us, and encourages us to live in a carefree way that seems appealing because it is easy, but a way that is often utterly negligent or insensitive to the rest of the species in the world.

Fewer people would protest against veal if calves were always shown enjoying tea (or milk) parties with rodeo clowns in commercials for places that serve veal.  But maybe that's a bad thing. Maybe there are problems with how it is raised, etc.  that should be addressed, and that we need more support for changing it, not less.

Answer 5

In general, the danger is a loss in perspective.

To give an example, an animal rights person I know feeds her cat a vegan diet (which makes her cat escape and eat LOTS OF birds, btw, and I don't blame poor kitty one bit.) Any biologist, or even a rational person, knows Fluffy the cat is a predator, and would not try to force veganism on it because if you have a problem with predation, you have no right to have a predator pet. (Strangely enough, this young lady says she'd never own a snake, because she'd have to feed it rats, acknowledging a predator is a bloody predator, except for fluffy ones.)

(My cats eat a commercial organic kibble, bones and raw food and all the mice, voles, rats, grubs, moles, shrews and moths they can catch. They wear bells to warn off birds, and actually live and play with bunny rabbits.)

Answer 6

Petapeople ... I guess one could say they mean well in general. Extremists of any kind aren't well-adjusted in the larger sense.

I had a dog that had a health problem and to indicate what he wanted he'd lie to me. What he wanted and what he could have weren't always compatible. Lying worked though so he was able to use that ploy in other instances to try to manipulate his environment.

His vocabulary of human words was phenomal for a dog, what he could recognize and correctly react to. On the other hand he was so civilized that out on a 1000 acre ranch he chased a jackrabbit to a 3-wire barbed wire fence then ran to the gate to go out ... no bunny. We astonished humans laughed until we hurt.

Let humans bond with their pets and say their cats have hands or that 'boons have social grooming and feeding groups. I don't care. We can learn from it all.

Answer 7

It dissolves the persons abillity to discriminate and treat non human things properly. This can cause a world of problems, but it all depends on the degree by which the person anthropomorphises non-human things and also how they deal with these same things. I can think of one good example of how it can be bad, though:

Ex) I remember a zoo keeper stating that when she was taking care of a young camal, raising it, she couldn't risk associating human emotions with the animal otherwise it might not grow up properly as...well a camal. So, I know for fact someone who directly raises animals would endanger an animals growth by treating it like a human being.

Im an anthropomorphic artist, and I make up pieces that often deal with objects and animals having human characteristics. Its not totally unhealthy to associate non-human things with humans by anthropomorphising them, but to a certain (high) degree anyone would have to admit it can be unhealthy. It depends on the degree, the situation at hand, and if someone or something gets hurt as a result that anthropomorphising becomes an issue.

Well, Im no expert, but since anthropomorphism is something I deal with alot I thought I'd throw in my two cents worth.

~LC

Answer 8

People that will spend 50K on chemotherapy for a ten year old dog while the majority of the world has no real health care.

Answer 9

We continue the myth of human supremecy/exceptionalism over every other living organism on earth and forget our dependency to the whole ecosystem.