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 | quote: | Originally posted by Renegade
I think it probably comes back to "Theory of Mind" - that is, our innate capacity to attribute agency to other entities - and the fact that this capacity has evolved to be somewhat promiscuous in the sense that it's better to tricked by a false positive (i.e. assuming there is an agent present when in actual fact there isn't) than to be tricked by a false negative (i.e. assuming there isn't an agent present when in actual fact there is). It's a similar phenomenon to "pareidolia", where the evolutionary need to detect even the smallest change in facial expression has produced a kind of hyperactive facial-detection system in the brain, prone to detecting faces where they do not exist, like in the moon or emoticons like this ->  .
For what it's worth, I think this innate capacity for promiscuous agency detection also goes some way to explaining religious beliefs, where the mind is capable of effortlessly attributing an anthropic intellect to inanimate objects like mountains, or trees, or bronze idols or (more commonly among modern religions) a kind of free-floating agency that exists unattached to anything earthly at all. I suppose a less emotionally salient form of that kind of thinking is capable of giving rise to a belief (no matter how fleeting or subconscious) in things like "stubborn" cars, "theiving" ATMs and "stupid" toasters that can and should be verbally reproached. |
This is pretty much what I've got in mind as well, and I'd say it does serve its explanatory purposes: if you say the alarm clock "forgot" to go off after a black out, as though it were a flighty maid that isn't quite responsible and needs a lesson, this generalisation is useful. Having a trigger-happy theory of mind is actually beneficial in this sense; in others, being tricked by these false positives you mention is not much of a problem. There isn't much problem in thinking that the chair on the right is happy and/or sad - if anything, it probably makes us more susceptible to recognise faces in diverse contexts.
However, I was curious about the pay-off when it comes to talking to inanimate objects. If the identification of these false positives didn't prove to be an advantage to us in the long term, we'd definitely become more picky. But, that doesn't happen.
Some of the advantages are quite obvious. For example, when you talk to the toaster as you try to fix it, it helps you make sense of what's going on through (linguistic) signs. But, unlike the explanatory purposes you mentioned (religious or otherwise), yelling at the remote, for example, has no immediate use other than venting one's momentary frustration. Here's yet another benefit.
Is that all there is to it, though? Are we faded to be "anti-autistic" (i.e. assigning a naïve theory of mind to nearly everything, as opposed to not ascribing mental states to nothing at all) because of a harmless quirk? Or because it's actually proven to be a quite useful tool in dealing with the world? I believe the latter is right, and I'm looking for counter-examples.
ps.: Nice to see your blog is active, by the way
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Last edited by Lira on Sep-06-2009 at 19:07
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