---
slug: anthropomorphic_fallacy
name: Anthropomorphic Fallacy
one_liner: "Misattributing human agency, intention, or mind to a non-human system, reading its behavior as if it were driven by human-like purposes — the over-projection pole dual to human-centered accommodation's adapt-to-real-human-limits stance."
type: prime
schema_version: 2
status: density_v2_draft
categories: [cognitive, epistemic]
origin_domain: cognitive_science
alternate_origin_domains: [philosophy, biology, artificial_intelligence, design]
aliases: [anthropomorphism, mind_projection, pathetic_fallacy, agency_over_attribution, intentional_stance_error]
related: []
solution_archetypes: []
review_flags:
- "OPERATOR-DERIVED (op-01 dualization, sub-flavor 1c) — proposed as the dual of `human_centered_accommodation` along the human-model-direction axis (fit the system to real humans vs. project human mind onto the system). Discovered in the op-01 full sweep 2026-07-03. Verified absent via search_prime + slug check; COLLISION RISK flagged vs. fundamental_attribution_error and animism — needs explicit screen. STATUS: HOLD — pending owner curation."
- "Created 2026-07-03; STUB ONLY (frontmatter + Core Idea + Notes). Did NOT go through Phase-A triage. SI/SF/similarity grades are PROPOSER ESTIMATES pending triangulation. Body sections (Structural Signature onward) NOT yet written."
- "Phase-C action: re-similarity check vs fundamental_attribution_error, animism, mind_projection / intentional_stance, and the input human_centered_accommodation to confirm it is a distinct error-structure and not a special case of an existing bias prime; draw the contrast edges at incorporation. one_liner must be synced to a v1 draft per CLAUDE.md before merge."
substrate_independence:
  composite_substrate_independence: 2
  domain_breadth: 3
  structural_abstraction: 2
  transfer_evidence: 3
  reasoning: 'The bare structure — a modelling error in which an observer imports a rich human-agency model (intention, belief, feeling, purpose) onto a system that does not instantiate it, and then predicts/explains the system with that mismatched model — is fairly general and recurs across substrates: attributing intent to animals, minds to machines and LLMs, purpose to weather and markets, design to evolved traits. That gives domain breadth ~3. But the pattern is defined relative to a specific projected model (the human mind), so it is not a fully substrate-neutral relation the way a scheduling or feedback structure is — its content is bound to what a human observer is and does, lowering structural abstraction to 2. Transfer evidence is real and repeatedly named across cognition, biology, and AI (pathetic fallacy, teleology critiques, ELIZA effect), so transfer evidence is 3, and the composite is 2: a genuine cross-domain error-structure that nonetheless carries a human-observer frame.'
similarity_to_nearest_existing_prime:
  slug: human_centered_accommodation
  similarity: 0.38
structural_framed:
  label: mixed-framed
  aggregate: 0.52
  criteria: {vocab_travels: 0.4, evaluative_weight: 0.6, institutional_origin: 0.3, human_practice_bound: 0.7, import_vs_recognize: 0.6}
  rationale: 'The candidate is a named cognitive error, so it carries evaluative weight (it labels an attribution as mistaken) and is bound to a human observer whose mind-model is being over-projected (human_practice_bound high). Its vocabulary travels partway across biology, AI, and philosophy but drags the "fallacy"/critique frame with it. It has less institutional origin than a value-frame like minimalism (it is a recognized reasoning error, not an institution product), pulling that criterion down. Aggregate ~0.52 lands it mixed-framed: a real modelling structure wrapped in an error-attributing frame relative to the human mind.'
phase_b_passes_completed: []
---
# Anthropomorphic Fallacy

## Core Idea

The anthropomorphic fallacy is a *modelling error*: an observer explains or predicts a non-human system by importing the rich model of a human mind — intention, belief, desire, feeling, deliberate purpose — onto a system that does not actually instantiate that model, and then reasons about the system as if those human-like drivers were really there. The load-bearing move is a *type-mismatch of models*: the observer has a powerful, deeply practiced model of *other humans as intentional agents*, and applies it where it does not fit, treating the system's behavior as the output of human-style agency rather than of the mechanisms it actually runs on. It sits on the same axis as its dual `human_centered_accommodation` but at the opposite pole. Human-centered accommodation runs the human model in the *right* direction — discover the real capacities and limits of the humans in a system and shape the system to them. The anthropomorphic fallacy runs the human model in the *wrong* direction — take the human model and project it *outward* onto a non-human system, attributing to the artifact, animal, or process a mind it does not have. One fits the system to real humans; the other reads a human into the system.

The characteristic failure has a definite structure and a definite cost. Structurally, it is *over-attribution of agency*: the observer explains a mechanism (a thermostat "wanting" to reach temperature, an evolved trait "trying" to survive, a market "punishing" a decision, a language model "understanding" a request) with intentional vocabulary that the underlying substrate does not warrant, collapsing the distinction between *behaving as if* and *actually being* an intentional agent. The cost is *predictive and explanatory error in a specific direction*: because the human-agency model carries expectations — that the system has consistent goals, can be reasoned or negotiated with, will respond to persuasion, feels or intends — the observer mispredicts exactly where the system diverges from a mind (it has no goals to appeal to, no feelings to spare, no understanding behind a fluent surface). The trade-off is real and worth naming: the human-agency model is *cheap and often locally useful* — Dennett's intentional stance shows that treating a system "as if" it had beliefs and desires can predict its behavior efficiently — so the fallacy is not merely projecting the model but *forgetting the "as-if"*: mistaking a convenient predictive shorthand for a literal claim about the system's inner life, and then being surprised when the system fails to behave like the mind one imputed to it.

As one structure the pattern recurs across substrates. In **biology** it is naive teleology and animal-mind over-reading — attributing conscious purpose to evolution or human-like intent to a pet's behavior. In **artificial intelligence** it is the ELIZA effect and its modern form: reading genuine understanding, belief, or feeling into a system whose fluent output is produced by different mechanisms. In **the study of nature** it is the *pathetic fallacy* — a cruel sea, an angry storm. In **markets and institutions** it is treating an aggregate or an algorithm as a single willful agent. Each is the same move: import the human-mind model where it does not belong.

## Notes

**Provenance.** Produced by the op-01 dualization operator (sub-flavor 1c) as the dual of `human_centered_accommodation` along the *direction the human-model is applied* axis: accommodation fits the system to real humans; the anthropomorphic fallacy projects the human mind outward onto a non-human system. Discovered in the op-01 full sweep 2026-07-03. A single dualization route proposed it; the convergence signal is the clean directional inversion of an existing prime rather than multiple independent routes.

**For owner evaluation (keep/cut).** The case *for* is that this names a genuine, cross-domain reasoning error with a specific and useful signature — over-projection of the intentional/agency model onto systems that don't instantiate it — which is increasingly load-bearing in the AI era (the ELIZA effect and over-trust of fluent models are live, consequential cases) and which the corpus does not yet name. The decisive risks the manifest flags, which should drive keep/cut: (1) **Collision with `fundamental_attribution_error`.** FAE is about *mis-locating the cause* of a human's behavior (over-weighting disposition over situation) — same family of attribution error but a *different mismatch*: FAE misattributes *among* human-explanatory factors, whereas the anthropomorphic fallacy misattributes *human mind onto non-mind*. Kurt should confirm this is a distinct axis and not a special case; the estimated low similarity to the input (~0.38) does not settle the FAE question, which must be screened directly. (2) **Overlap with `animism`.** Animism (attributing spirit/soul/agency to objects and nature) may already cover much of this, or may be the *narrower* instance of which the anthropomorphic fallacy is the genus — decide which is the right unit, and whether one subsumes the other. (3) **Framed / error-label risk.** The candidate is framed as a *fallacy* (mixed-framed, aggregate ~0.52); its content is bound to the human observer whose mind-model is projected, and calling an attribution "mistaken" carries evaluative weight. A more structural framing (e.g. *model type-mismatch* or *over-attribution of agency* neutrally stated) might be the better hold, of which "anthropomorphic fallacy" is the human-facing special case. (4) **Intentional-stance tension.** Because Dennett's intentional stance shows the "as-if" model is *legitimately predictive*, the prime must carve the fallacy precisely as *forgetting the as-if / literalizing the shorthand*, not as any use of intentional vocabulary — otherwise it over-fires. No slug collision found; nearest existing prime is the input.

**At incorporation.** Re-run similarity against `fundamental_attribution_error`, `animism`, mind-projection / intentional-stance material, and the input `human_centered_accommodation` to fix the boundary and decide genus-vs-instance. Draw the dual edge to `human_centered_accommodation` and explicit *not-to-be-confused-with* contrast edges to fundamental_attribution_error and animism at incorporation. Write the v1 draft and sync `one_liner` across v1 and v2 in the same commit per CLAUDE.md.
