Quote:
Originally Posted by ericthered
To be fair, we anthropomorphize almost everything, and especially complex things. Its one of the tools we use to comprehend the world.
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And like any tool, it can be applied well or badly.
We anthropomorphize pets, for ex, to a huge degree. But it's far less of an error when applied to a pet dog or cat than it is to a pet python or cobra. People speak of their animals loving them, including a degree of anthropomorphism in so doing. Yet it's not necessarily false of a dog or a cat, just incomplete or imperfect. People who imagine that their pet python 'loves them back' are probably mainly engaging in self-deception.
But there's more to it than just genetic kinship. A chimp is a far closer relative of Man than a dog, but because we've bred dogs for millennia to work with us, in some ways anthropomorphic thinking maps onto dogs better than it does chimps.
But true aliens? Would we instinctively anthropomorphize a creature that can't even experience the same environment we do? (A methane-based creature who lives at Titanian temperatures, for ex.) Hard to say.