The Biology and Evolution of the Three Psychological Tendencies to Anthropomorphize Biology and Evolution

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.

Teleology’s long shadow

“…Evolution: Education and Outreach *Correspondence: awerth@hsc.edu 1 Department of Biology, Hampden-Sydney College, Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943, USA Full list of author information is available at the end of the article 1 We acknowledge that teleology may be defined in many ways (see informed overviews by Reiss 2009;Varella 2018;Woodfield 1976). Many (perhaps most) discussions in biology to date have focused on causality (harkening back to Aristotle's final causes).…”

“…For example, normativity seems to characterize the purpose/function distinction (and perhaps the teleological/teleonomic distinction). We regard normativity as intimately linked to the roles of intention and motivated agency (and thus to diffuse anthropomorphic tendencies) in popular (student) conceptions (Varella 2018). Thus, while there may ultimately be a narrow set of legitimate uses of teleology in biology (using other definitions or conceptions of teleology), we do not consider these highly stipulative cases to reflect those encountered in educational settings and that foster the kinds of misunderstandings about normative justification that we address here.…”

Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution

“…Importantly, in this regard it has also been argued that teleological reasoning per se is not necessarily a problem (Varella, 2018;Legare et al, 2018;Zohar & Ginossar, 1998). Our evolved human tendency to see functions, goals, and purposes can be appropriate and Causal mapping as a teaching tool for reflecting on causation in human evolution ---Preprint --helpful in exploring the causes and functions of biological phenomena and explaining them to others.…”

“…and 'what for?' questions" (Varella, 2018). Similarly, Mayr (1974) stated that " [t]he teleological dilemma (...) consists in the fact that numerous and seemingly weighty objections against the use of teleological language have been raised by various critics, and yet biologists have insisted that they would lose a great deal, methodologically and heuristically, if they were prevented from using such language."…”

“…(p. 136). According to Varella (2018), teleological reasoning becomes problematic, among others, when: it is misapplied to all aspects within a domain, such as when all phenomena in biology are explained by having a function (adaptationism), or when attributing internal desires or needs to all actions of biological agents (fundamental attribution error), or when attributing intention to all human actions (intentionality bias); or when it is misapplied to a different domain, such as when human-specific mental states such as explicit beliefs are misapplied to other biological organisms (anthropomorphic reasoning).…”