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Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. However, one often can observe the inverse happening as well. Namely the attribution of non-human entities’ traits, emotions, or intentions to human entities. For example the biography book about Winston Churchill is called “The Last Lion” or professional boxers being nicknamed “Pitbull”, “Tiger”,”The Hammer”, etc.

Or would this be just an extension of anthropomorphism in which humans attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions onto non-human entities and then relate them back to humans again? Because, in order to attribute non-human entities’ traits, emotions, or intentions onto humans, one would first need to attribute human traits, emotions, or intentions onto non-human entities?

Do social philosophers have a term that is roughly the inverse of anthropomorphism?

Geoffrey Thomas
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Kroko
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    What's the inverse of anthropos? There you have your answer. – RodolfoAP Nov 19 '21 at 16:07
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    Zoomorphism covers animal examples. There is no general term, but "reverse anthropomorphism" will likely be understood as intended. – Conifold Nov 19 '21 at 17:03
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  • Edited to clarify question. – J D Nov 19 '21 at 20:19
  • My first reaction is that this question is like asking for the square root of purple. – Daniel Asimov Nov 20 '21 at 03:34
  • I don't think nearly as much thought or intention goes into these nicknames as the question implies. In the case of "Pitbull", "Tiger", "The Hammer" etc... these are just emotion-evoking (i.e., Emotive) synonyms for something like, "tough fighter." The same thing is at play with "The Last Lion" in its attempt to encapsulate and show the reader how an author or character feels about something (in this case Churchill). – Lucretius Nov 26 '21 at 17:53

2 Answers2

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Short Answer

In social philosophy, the opposite of ascribing human traits to objects is to reduce humans to objects. This is objectification.

Long Answer

It's a psychological reality that humans, using their imagination, often see objects or even animals as humans. No place of this is more obvious than in literature where stories, like Aesop's fables are renowned. If one thinks about the psychological capacity to do the inverse, or the opposite, then one might think about stripping the human being of his or her essences rendering them as animals or objects. This is known as objectification, which is how humans dehumanize other humans. From WP:

In social philosophy, objectification is the act of treating a person, or sometimes an animal,2 as an object or a thing. It is part of dehumanization, the act of disavowing the humanity of others.

Objectification has very important deontological consequences because axiological considerations can greatly vary when an object of consideration is a either a physical object or a human being. From a naturalized epistemology, roots for this in psychosocial circumstances might be understood as having roots in biological altruism culminating in psychological altruism. It's important to understand that human morality can be seen as an exercise in logical consequences rooted in animalistic impulses of eusocial behavior.

J D
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There's no simple inverse to a concept like anthropomorphism; it isn't a binary or scalar term, but a conceptual object. Would it make sense to ask for the inverse of a triangle? The best we can normally do is find an array of different concepts that are opposite on single salient dimensions. In this case, three or four spring to mind.

  • The case you have in mind — e.g., calling a boxer 'Tiger' — would be viewed as a form of animism: the investment of a human with the spirit of an animal. This isn't something social philosophers or social scientists think about often, because it seems harmless (though I tend to disagree; violent nationalism invariably endows its leaders with this kind of animism).
  • A less savory case is objectification, when a human isn't invested with the spirit of an animal, but reduced to something non-human. There are two forms of this:
    • Fetishism, where one reduces a human to animalism as part of a desire-fantasy: e.g., the too-typical expression in the West that Asian women are 'exotic' (a word which translates as 'not quite human/civilized)
    • Dehumanization, where one reduces a human to animalism for selfish-pragmatic reasons: e.g., the literal treatment of slaves as animals, or the bureaucratic reduction of people to a 'workforce' (as though people have no important qualities other than their capacity to labor). The specifically Marist version of this is called alienation, though some people use 'alienation' as a rough synonym for 'objectification'.

Take this more as a rough categorization than a strict rule-set. We can often blend the terms together in specific cases. For instance, it sometimes makes sense to think of fetishism as objectified animism; the boundary isn't crystal clear.

Ted Wrigley
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