anthropomorphizing the magical1

I have been taking a philosophy of mind course and after reading psychologism and behaviorism, I ended up with the reflection that we anthropomorphize “mystical” or “magical” things. Without going too much into the article, the main difference between the two lines of thought towards “intelligence” is if it is private or public. I’m on the side that defines intelligence as having some sort of “special sauce”, that isn’t a mesaurable attribute, which makes sense as I have written throughout my reflections about my agreeance with “Chalmers” and his “problem of other minds”.

Back to the main point; we often treat unknown entities that we aren’t fully knowledgable about as having human characteristics. I mean I assume that is how Greek and Roman mythology even came about. The way in which we confer nature and other properties like ecological ones as if they were “persons” with a selfhood or reasons that can be interacted is interesting.

Shouting at the computer when it is not working or angrilly telling ChatGPT it was incorrect seems very much of the same phenomenon2.


  1. “anthropomorphizing” is the longest word I have used. ↩

  2. Social Cognition Unbound: Insights Into Anthropomorphism and Dehumanization ↩