What is the name of the logical fallacy where someone attributes human characteristics to non-human subjects?
Anthropomorphization.
Is anthopomorphism a logical fallacy, tho?
I would argue that assigning human attributes to nonhuman objects and animals is fundamentally fallacious. Although, perhaps not a logical fallacy in the strictest sense of the term.
Thank you everyone. I knew it had to do with anthropomorphism, but didn’t know that that was the name of the fallacy.
In the comic book series Jack of Fables, the Pathetic Fallacy is a character. Which means the writer, Bill Willingham, has attributed human characteristics to a non-human object - namely, the concept of attributing human characteristics to non-human objects.
Assigning human characteristics to non-human, especially non-animate things, isn’t exactly logical, is it? And if it has no relevance to truth, you could say it was a fallacy, yes?
It’s important to distinguish between the pathetic fallacy and a useful metaphor or visualization: Saying a program is confused by this input or can’t get along with this other program doesn’t imply the programmer is confused, but that he’s thinking in terms of the big-picture results of what are likely a large number of details he’ll get into later. Attributing intentions and emotions is a way to give a convenient high-level summary.
Secondly, well, do dogs have human traits? Do lizards? Do bacteria? There is a level of complexity below which there is no real intention but defining where that line lies has consumed countless hours of intense argumentation.
Could you give an example of what you mean?
I would tend to think that classical anthropomorphism isn’t a logical argument, in the philosophical sense of the word, and thus could not be a “logical fallacy”.
Unless I’m invoking a strict definition of “logical fallacy” that doesn’t really exist, of course. Not a Philosopher, me.