Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism

by Lorraine Daston (Editor), Gregg Mitman (Editor)

Is anthropomorphism a scientific sin? Scientists and animal researchers routinely warn against "animal stories," and contrast rigorous explanations and observation to facile and even fanciful projections about animals. Yet many of us, scientists and researchers included, continue to see animals as humans and humans as animals. As this innovative new collection demonstrates, humans use animals to transcend the confines of self and species; they also enlist them to symbolize, dramatize, and illuminate aspects of humans' experience and fantasy. Humans merge with animals in stories, films, philosophical speculations, and scientific treatises. In their performance with humans on many stages and in different ways, animals move us to think.

From Victorian vivisectionists to elephant conservation, from ancient Indian mythology to pet ownership in the contemporary United States, our understanding of both animals and what it means to be human has been shaped by anthropomorphic thinking. The contributors to Thinking with Animals explore the how and why of anthropomorphism, drawing attention to its rich and varied uses. Prominent scholars in the fields of anthropology, ethology, history, and philosophy, as well as filmmakers and photographers, take a closer look at how deeply and broadly ways of imagining animals have transformed humans and animals alike.

Essays in the book investigate the changing patterns of anthropomorphism across different time periods and settings, as well as their transformative effects, both figuratively and literally, upon animals, humans, and their interactions. Examining how anthropomorphic thinking "works" in a range of different contexts, contributors reveal the ways in which anthropomorphism turns out to be remarkably it can promote good health and spirits, enlist support in political causes, sell products across boundaries of culture of and nationality, crystallize and strengthen social values, and hold up a philosophical mirror to the human predicament.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Animals, Philosophy

230 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Lorraine Daston (born June 9, 1951, East Lansing, Michigan)[1] is an American historian of science. Executive director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, and visiting professor in the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago, she is considered an authority on Early Modern European scientific and intellectual history. In 1993, she was named a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Reviews

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are some good essays in here on how well humans can think about how non human animals think, as well as how we think about ourselves using animals as symbols. The most interesting essays for me were deconstructing anthropomorphism (though I came to this book for the essay on the intentional individualization of elephants for conservation messaging purposes).

Sandra Mitchell lays out a nicely plotted description of the logical dilemma around anthropomorphism that is well summarized in her opening paragraph "anthropomorphism is neither prima facie bad or necessarily nonscientific. It can be both, but it need not be either." It's certainly true that we commit an error in thinking when we try to attribute mental states to non-human animals that are identical to our own and ignore relevant differences between species that may influence whether or how a different species perceives and thinks about the world. As Mitchell points out, this is philosophically still a problem in attributing mental states to other humans, as we can never actually know the mental interiority of anyone outside ourselves. Thus we should rely on empirical evidence to substantiate our hypotheses that similar behaviors between humans and, say, chimpanzees are attributable to similar internal mental states and similar cognitive mechanisms and not explainable by simpler/non-rational psychological mechanisms (a la Morgan's canon, covered in the preceding essay and which foils nicely here). She then gives a very brief description of a series of experiments by Povinelli et al suggesting that chimps (and by implication all other non-human animals) have at best weak theory of mind. This one set of experiments though doesn't test ToM in chimps very well though - a raft of other studies before and after show much more evidence for complex ToM in chimps. Crucially, these are experiments that take into account the idiosyncrasies of chimp behavior/cognition (not trying to evaluate whether chimps show human ToM but something more appropriate to/evolved for chimp ecology instead) and which don't test how well chimps understand human testers but rather how well they understand other chimps. It always struck me as profoundly unreflective that human can deride anthropomorphism as inappropriate b/c we can't know other species' minds but can then also expect chimps or other animals to understand human minds in experimental tests. Anyway, Frans de Waal does a good job of summarizing the limitations of previous attempts at empirically testing non-human animal intelligence. We've come a long way on this but have much further to go.

What was a surprisingly interesting essay was the Victorian Lab Animals essay. I had no idea about the history of philosophical thinking around non-human animal cognition/intelligence. It was very interesting to learn about Darwin himself proposing intelligence and individuality in several species. And curious to see that subsequent debate over the physiological underpinnings of animal movement deriving either from some sort of immaterial soul/will or naturally explainable forces selected for by natural selection and shared amongst all species. The essay doesn't delve into this, but the implication is that when physiologists determined that we are demonstrably not animated by an immaterial soul, then some basis for ascribing moral value to non-human animals evaporated. I would be quite interested in learning more about the development of this thinking and the internal psychology of a Victorian vivisectionist who professes to love dogs while literally eviscerating them, vs the anti-vivisectionist advocates. Sounds like fertile grounds for novelistic exploration.

[Suellen Rubira · Rating 4 out of 5]

Seleção de artigos sobre os animais cujo fio condutor é o papel do antropomorfismo, muito criticado no âmbito da ciência. Entretanto, os autores defendem o uso dessas relações humanas projetadas ao universo de outras espécies de animais quando são rigorosamente observadas e não apenas uma comparação "como se". Um dos artigos ressalta o perigo de se cair no extremo oposto, o "antropodenial", a negação de projeções humanas aos animais que não é nem um pouco criticada, mesmo que resulte em um erro de observação.

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good and diverse selection of essays on anthropomorphism. These are generally not essays on the right/wrong debate over anthropomorphism, although that does play a part in some. Instead these tend to focus on how anthropomorphism shows up in society - science, history & culture.
The writings tend to be rather scholarly and are not light reading material, but for those inclined to understand the phenomenon in a new way, it's worth it.

[Sarah]

Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism by Lorraine Daston (2006)