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What Is Anthropomorphizing? Psychology, Benefits, and Downsides

Anthropomorphizing means attributing human qualities to non-human things — such as objects, animals, or phenomena. Some people do this more than others.

Anthropomorphizing is a common way humans perceive and interact with the world around them. The way we project human-like qualities onto objects has changed over the years, but the concept remains the same.

Children often anthropomorphize as they are curious about the world, and it helps them make sense of their environment. Kids may notice human-like things about non-human objects that adults dismiss. Some people have a tendency to anthropomorphize that lasts into adulthood.

Anthropomorphism is when you think about animals or objects as if they were human.

For instance, pet owners might observe human-like qualities in their pets, believing that their pet is experiencing an emotional state similar to what a human feels. Or someone might attribute personality characteristics, preferences, and opinions to soft toys.

People might also anthropomorphize technology items, such as:

• computers
• robots
• electronic toys

Other examples of anthropomorphizing include:

• talking animals or inanimate objects in myths, films, and books
• empathizing with inanimate objects that you perceive as having human-like features
• treating cars, computers, and machines as if they have minds
• giving human names to storms
• dressing animals in clothing
• attributing human qualities to spirits or other entities

Although anyone can do it, some people are more likely to engage in anthropomorphizing than others.

For example, research from 2018 shows that children often anthropomorphize by giving traits and emotions to their toys. Many continue doing this into adulthood.

People generally anthropomorphize to make sense of events and behaviors they experience. Further, attributing emotions, attitudes, mental states, faces, and values to non-human things can help you feel connected to something.

Human brains process social information quickly, so it’s natural for them to assess non-humans with the same thought process. You might be so accustomed to perceiving faces around you that you begin to see them in something non-human that resembles one, even vaguely.

Additionally, anthropomorphizing might make it easier for you to experience connectedness and empathy. If you tend to anthropomorphize, you may also have more moral thoughts and experience more guilt after hurting someone.

Attributing human-like qualities to pets or objects can have benefits, like fulfilling a social need.

For instance, when someone gets lonely or feels sensitive about social relationships, they may lean toward attributing human features to their pets.

In addition, people might find anxiety or stress relief by attributing emotions to something that makes them comfortable, like a soft toy. Plus, anthropomorphizing may help you better understand other people and connect with the world around you.

Anthropomorphism can also promote wildlife conservation. When people attribute human-like qualities to nature, they highlight similarities between themselves and wildlife. This may improve empathy levels and attitudes to promote conservation initiatives and policies.

Recently, 2021 research has indicated that anthropomorphism might cause misunderstandings that negatively impact your pets.

While animals get excited to see their human or play fetch, trying to understand animals based on human thoughts and behaviors can be detrimental.

For instance, you might not recognize why your animal behaves a specific way if you attribute it to human qualities. Because pets have different biological needs than humans. attributing human characteristics to them can lead to incidences that harm their needs and interests.

Besides this, more research is needed before any further dangers or downsides to anthropomorphizing can be determined.

Humans are social, and this quality can lead to anthropomorphizing non-humans.

You might attribute human-like qualities to inanimate objects, animals, nature, or other entities. This likely stems from trying to better understand and relate to the world around you.

Anthropomorphizing isn’t always detrimental. For instance, it may improve your well-being by creating a sense of comfort and connectedness.

Things as living people — ECONS.ONLINE

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The tendency to humanize inanimate objects helps people to comprehend the surrounding reality and reduce uncertainty, and companies to strengthen consumer loyalty and increase sales. Anthropomorphism helps both in protecting the environment and in the fight against the pandemic.

February 5, 2021 | Irina Ryabova Econs

The tendency to humanize inanimate objects helps people comprehend the surrounding reality and reduce uncertainty, and companies - to strengthen consumer loyalty and increase sales. Anthropomorphism helps both in protecting the environment and in the fight against the pandemic.

February 5, 2021 | Irina Ryabova Econs

During the pandemic, the coronavirus managed to receive a variety of epithets in official speeches and media reports: "invisible enemy" "Cunning Opponent" "cruel" and "insidious" - COVID-19 now and then appeared to be animated and possessing certain human traits. Anthropomorphism, that is, the transfer of the human image to inanimate objects, animals, natural phenomena or abstract concepts, in the case of the virus was not just a literary device - it contributed to the fight against the pandemic, concludes a recent research scientists from the universities of Edinburgh, Louisville and the University of Guelph (Ontario). Humanizing an object or phenomenon makes it more understandable and concrete, and this reduces the psychological distance between it and a person, the authors explain: when humanizing the coronavirus, people began to consider it more dangerous than they thought before, and took more active protective measures. This should be taken into account in health policy and communication, the authors recommend.

Anthropomorphism can be useful not only in the fight against viruses: scientists are actively studying how it affects human behavior and how it can be used in practice.

Social norms dictate that anthropomorphization is a sign of childishness or stupidity - an adult talking to his household appliances or teddy bear is considered infantile, if not crazy, but in fact, attributing intelligence to objects is a "by-product" of active intellectual and social cognition, noted Nicholas Epley, professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Chicago, author of the book “Intuition. How to understand what other people feel, think and want. Anthropomorphization is a reflection of the development of the greatest abilities of the human brain, which made a person uniquely smart on the planet, and not at all a sign of stupidity, Epley explains. Moreover, humanization can be viewed as a cognitive approach that helps to quickly and effectively understand the world around us and adapt to it, write researchers from the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of Messina.

Anthropomorphization is, in fact, induction, that is, knowledge from the particular to the general: a person uses knowledge and ideas about himself to draw conclusions about the properties and characteristics of unknown surrounding objects, explain Epley and his co-authors at the University of Chicago. According to their theory, there are several main reasons behind the tendency of people to humanize the surrounding objects. The simplest is that the humanized object simply looks like a person. This explains, for example, pareidolia - the tendency of people to see faces and eyes in objects and nature, as well as the choice anthropomorphic design in the development of robots that interact with people.

People often attribute intelligence to things they like. Anthropomorphization reflects a person's desire to create and maintain social ties, and if social ties in the environment are not enough, the desire to humanize objects increases. For example, in the movie Cast Away, the hero of Tom Hanks, who finds himself on a desert island, makes a friend - a volleyball, with whom he constantly talks, addressing him by the name Wilson - in honor of the manufacturing company. Lonely people are more likely to humanize objects and animals, showed A study by Epley et al found that in one experiment, participants who experienced more loneliness were more likely to attribute human characteristics to a “runaway” alarm clock on wheels; in another, they were more likely to attribute attentiveness and empathy to animals.

Finally, anthropomorphization helps to rationalize and explain behavior that seems incomprehensible, and thus control the world around. Attributing intelligence and human nature to things in this case provides an intuitive and easily accessible way to reduce the level of uncertainty by simplifying difficult-to-understand phenomena. For example, the World Meteorological Organization notes that giving human names to hurricanes simplifies communication with the media, increases interest in meteorological warnings and increases public preparedness for the likelihood of natural disasters.

The tendency to humanize can be reinforced if the environment is more difficult to understand: something unpredictable is more likely to be endowed with reason. in one more In a study by Epley et al., participants were shown the behavior of two dogs, one of which acted less predictably. Those who were more in control of the situation were more likely to attribute human qualities to the less predictable dog.

Anthropomorphization creates attachment to the humanized object, which is actively used in marketing and advertising. One of the tricks is to humanize the brand logo: for example, Mr. Peanut (eng. "Mr. Peanuts") as a symbol of the American company Planters, which produces nuts and other snacks, or a tire man, which has become a symbol of the tire manufacturer Michelin. Thus, the brand begins to be associated with certain "personalities", and this contributes to the establishment of a trusting and sustainable relationship between a person and a brand.

An even more common marketing approach is to anthropomorphize the product itself. Studies show that humanizing a product makes it more likely to a positive assessment by consumers if they associate it with one or another familiar image. Marketers stimulate this perception in two main ways: firstly, through anthropomorphic design (for example, the grille, which, together with the headlights, creates the effect of a “smiling face” on a car), and secondly, by associating products with human roles - positioning them as assistants. in the household, comrades, family members, etc.

Anthropomorphization increases the credibility of the humanized object. Experiments involving drivers driving in a simulator in a conventional car, in a self-driving car, and in a "humanized" self-driving car - he was given the name Iris and a female voice on the speakers - showed that drivers of a "humanized" unmanned car trust it more than those who drove a conventional and unmanned "inhuman" car.

Humanization not only improves the attitude of the consumer towards the product, but also increases the willingness to pay more for it, the experimental study found. Its authors put up for an online auction the same electronic tablet, but in one case they posted its standard photo, and in the other they gave it human features (they drew a face, hands, etc.): the rates of those who wanted to buy a tablet turned out to be higher if the gadget had a human face. What exactly underlies this behavior of people is the subject of further research, the authors admit, but one of the main mechanisms may be the involuntary emergence of emotional attachment, which enhances the desire to purchase a product.

However, anthropomorphism can also be detrimental to sales, showed a study by psychologists Jesse Chandler from the University of Michigan and Norbert Schwartz from the University of Southern California. So, people themselves often treat their cars as animated beings - comrades or even family members who become the object of attention and care. For example, car owners who humanize their cars experience less desire to change them for new ones and spend more on their maintenance and repair, which can be negative for automakers interested in expanding sales of new models.

At the same time, when deciding whether it is time to change the car, such drivers are often guided not by the objective state of the old car, but by their emotional attitude towards it. Thus, drivers who described the color of their car as “warm” were less likely to talk about the desire to sell it and buy a new one than those who called the color of the car “cold” - it was not so much about the color scheme, but about the warmth of the soul. Considering such features of perception, when choosing a marketing strategy, it may be more profitable for companies to humanize, after all, not the product itself, but the brand.

Anthropomorphism can be useful not only in business, but also in environmental protection. People who humanize nature are more likely to feel guilty about environmental degradation and are therefore more motivated to care for and take action to protect it. figured out Kim Pon Tam from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Fiction and animation films, including humanization of animals, can inspire people to learn more about nature conservation and contribute to the conservation of biodiversity, consider environmentalist Matthew Silk and his colleagues at the University of Exeter. In general, anthropomorphization can be seen as a useful tool for environmental protection and ecological education: for example, activists often talk about "Mother Earth", and individual states and states of the United States pass laws that give certain natural objects rights, which implies that they can suffer damage or experience pain like people.

The theory of Epley, Weitz and Cachoppo, describing the causes of anthropomorphization, can give some idea about the opposite process - "dehumanization", or dehumanization. Dehumanization leads to the fact that people begin to be perceived as objects or animals and in the eyes of other people are deprived of human qualities and characteristics. This is used, for example, by the military - for dehumanization of the enemy, but at the same time can lead to uncontrolled aggression and massacres.

Factors that increase the tendency to humanize can also affect dehumanization. Thus, the higher the resemblance of an object to a person, the stronger will be the tendency of people to endow it with human features. But at the same time, the more a person discovers differences in a particular group of people (for example, another nationality or race), the more he may be inclined to “dehumanize” - that is, to perceive those who differ “not as people. ”

Stronger and more numerous intra-group social ties have various positive effects, but at the same time can increase the likelihood of "dehumanization" of other groups: closely related members of the group may consider others not like themselves, that is, in fact, not like people. As a result, socially "alien" groups - for example, migrants are often dehumanized, as are the most vulnerable or marginalized groups, in particular drug addicts and the homeless. Dehumanization increases psychological distance and moral alienation from others, which leads to a decrease in trust in society, an increase in aggression and the approval of discrimination.

Irina Ryabova

Editor of Econs.online

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Anthropomorphism as a form of cognition of the world

SCIENTIFIC NOTES OF KAZAN STATE UNIVERSITY Volume 152, kn. 1 Humanities 2010

UDC 13+303+165.9

ANTHROPOMORPHISM AS A FORM OF KNOWING THE WORLD

T.A. Titova

Annotation

The problem of anthropomorphism in philosophy is considered in the article, its cognitive and heuristic possibilities in different areas of social sciences and humanities are shown.

Keywords: anthropomorphism, anti-anthropomorphism, anthropomorphism as a worldview, historical anthropomorphism.

The topic of anthropomorphism has been little explored in philosophical science, although anthropomorphization is one of the main techniques used in the process of human cognition of the world. The main objective of this article is to show the cognitive, heuristic possibilities of anthropomorphism, which is sometimes unfairly attributed to primitive forms of consciousness organization. “Anthropomorphism - (Greek anthropos “man” and morphe “kind, form”)” [1] is an ideological form, fixed mainly in the language, in which the process of “transferring” the qualities of a person and the qualities of the natural element to each other takes place. A person "takes on" the properties of those objects that he is trying to master. This takes into account the special nature of man in relation to other natural forms. Synonyms for the term anthropomorphism are: “personification, personification (from Latin persona - face, personality and facio - I do), prosopopoeia (from Greek prosopon - face and poieo - I do). These synonyms mean a special kind of metaphor: the transfer of human traits (or traits of a living being) to inanimate objects and phenomena” [2].

We deliberately cite this well-known definition, which is reproduced almost unchanged in various sources, for example, in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia. This definition well reflects the main features: anthropomorphism as a worldview form (a), the principle of simultaneous equality and difference between man and nature (b) and the metaphorical nature of the expression of attitude (c).

The phenomenon of anthropomorphism was thoroughly studied by representatives of the philological sciences. This is due to the fact that it often manifests itself in a linguistic form. Anthropomorphism in poetry (literature in general) and everyday practical anthropomorphism have been studied in the most detail, which is quite natural, since in the first case its study was actually carried out in the logic of literary analysis, in the second it perfectly illustrated the mechanisms of thought language.

Artistic and aesthetic anthropomorphism manifests itself most fully in poetry. In poetic speech, the features of nature are transferred to a person (or his relationship) and vice versa. As an example, we can recall the line of V. Bryusov “My love is the scorching noon of Java” from the poem “Premonition”.

The prevalence of anthropomorphism in prose and poetry is so high that the refusal to use this technique can rather be called anomalous. For example, J. Dubois, the author of the work “General Rhetoric”, notes: “fabulists who love “talking” animals, as well as philosophers who study the development of consciousness in plants and even in matter in general, have retained numerous followers” ​​(quoted from [1] ). In literary criticism, there are many examples of anthropomorphism, and outside of literary and poetic speech itself, this type of presentation is widely used when describing the operation of a computer (memory, problem solving, friendly interface, etc.).

Ordinary-practical anthropomorphism is characteristic of the daily life of people, as well as of the early stage of child development. In everyday life, we often hear: “The train left”, “it started to rain” and much more. Children often explain cause-and-effect relationships in nature by analogy with relationships between people, for example: “There is no moon in the sky, because he went to visit” (see [1]). L. Ivanov notes that often inanimate objects, living beings and fictional entities that do not have human nature are endowed with human physical or mental qualities. They are credited, for example, with the ability to feel, experience emotions, talk, think, and perform meaningful actions.

However, the literary-poetic and ordinary-practical types of anthropomorphism in themselves are not of particular interest to us. Firstly, they are well studied, and secondly, we are more interested in the philosophical aspect of the problem, the issues of the development of consciousness in its cultural and social forms, namely, in this vein, anthropomorphism was not the subject of a special philosophical study.

It is important to note that the study of anthropomorphism in philosophy does not start from scratch. There is already a traditional distinction of anthropomorphism according to the spheres of spirituality. Here we are talking primarily about the study of mythological, religious anthropomorphism and even traces of anthropomorphism in scientific thinking. Of course, philological studies also provide material for philosophical reflection. But in any case, anthropomorphism is still regarded as a kind of relic moment of consciousness, as something left as a legacy from primitive forms of thinking.

Mythological anthropomorphism was the first to be historically formed (and logically mastered). The myth is based on the principle of natural conformity. A.N. Chanyshev notes that in the Homeric epic, almost everything natural and much social has its own logic, unusual for us, anthropomorphic hypostasis. Mythological personalities are among themselves in relations of consanguinity. For example, the god of sleep Hypnos is the twin brother of the god of death Thanatos, the god of horror Phobos is the son of the god of war Ares. Earth, water and sky (air and ether) are personified by the brothers Hades, Poseidon and Zeus. All these creatures are anthropomorphic

are zated, their images represent and personify various aspects of the human essence, understood naturally. As A.N. Chanyshev, the gods are bodily, they can be hurt, they experience pain. “True, they differ from people in eternal youth and immortality... They are only anthropomorphic twins of natural processes and phenomena” [3, p. fifteen].

Describing the consciousness of people with a mythological worldview, A.N. Chanyshev identifies the following features of it: “emotionality, figurative perception of the world, associativity, a (do) logic, a tendency to animate (hylozoism), spiritualize (animatism), animate its individual parts (animism)” [3, p. 17]. In our opinion, these forms can be considered as peculiar mechanisms of anthropomorphization of the world, ways of transferring human properties to it, and it is in this instrumental quality that they can be thought of as forms of cognition. The existing division of anthropomorphism according to the forms of worldview allows us to draw the following conclusion: if anthropomorphism is not an independent worldview form, but is present in a certain type of worldview, then we can assume that it is characteristic of any type of worldview, and not only for its primitive forms or everyday consciousness. This means that we have every reason to consider it as a real form of knowledge of the world. One can draw a parallel with ideology, which is not a form of social consciousness, but represents a certain horizontal instrumental cut of the entire structure and all forms of social consciousness in general.

Mythological anthropomorphism, existing in a naive-dogmatic, everyday form, develops into religious anthropomorphism - the transfer of the appearance and properties of a person to supernatural phenomena, which is inherent in most religious ideas. The main characteristic of religious anthropomorphism is the concept of the supernatural, that which does not fit into the principle of naturalness. The supernatural "transports" us into the spiritual realm. Anthropomorphic, in particular, are usually the gods of the so-called higher religions, although this circumstance is denied in theology. Religious anthropomorphism is characteristic of most confessional systems and is expressed in the transfer of the physical properties and mental qualities of a person to the object of worship. Anthropomorphism acts as the language of monotheistic religions, primarily Christianity, used by man to understand the world. For example, words like "sickness" and "love" reveal much about the Christian in the world. As a rule, all divine manifestations of the world are connected with love. God himself is love. Illness is a manifestation of the world associated with a person. The disease of the soul - the craving for the bodily world and pleasures - is the result of the falling away of the human world from God as a result of the fall. For Augustine, time is a disease of eternity: “if the present always remained present and did not go into the past, then it would no longer be time, but eternity” [4].

A peculiar anthropomorphism is manifested in the fact that God descends to man in order to enable him to understand the truth. He is likened to a man (allows himself to be likened to him) in order to speak with him in an understandable, “human” language, with the involvement of meanings that are understandable to him. In Christianity

man can be like God precisely because God is in some sense like man. God "reduces" his pathos, allows himself to be thought anthropomorphically. Man is god-like in spirituality, not in physicality. The metaphysics of God is transferred to man, becomes his, man's, metaphysics, while God is inevitably endowed with human qualities. They talk to the Christian God, they ask him, they worship him. Approaching God, a person rises himself.

Even the analysis of the mythological and religious types of anthropomorphism allows us to single out some formal, structural moments in it. Anthropomorphism is the process of mastering the external world by a person by mentally transferring himself to those processes, objects with which he interacts. Man sees himself in the world. Anthropomorphic worldview, which has developed at the dawn of civilization, actually plays the role of scientific or philosophical knowledge that is still missing, developed religious views, but when these forms appear, it does not lose its significance as a mechanism, an instrument of knowledge. Such a vision is typical for a mythological person who is aware of himself in somewhat altered, transformed forms of natural phenomena. Peculiar ways of such anthropomorphization are animism, the process of animating nature (the movement goes from man to the world) and totemism, the search for its origins in the animal world - a person takes on the properties of a natural being (the movement goes from the world to man). Anthropomorphization is carried out in two directions: the properties of a person are transferred to objects, phenomena (1), and the properties of nature are transferred to a person (2). We believe that in the analysis of anthropomorphism it is necessary to use more widely the concept of a transformed form that has developed in social philosophy. According to the ideas of K. Marx, then developed by M. K. Mamardashvili, the transformed form of consciousness makes it possible to think of a certain phenomenon as a whole, to restore broken connections, and allows the system to work. This means that anthropomorphism as a transformed form restores (builds) the connection between man and nature (mythological anthropomorphism), man and the supernatural (supernatural) spiritual sphere (religious anthropomorphism).

Speaking of anthropomorphism as a certain worldview form, it is customary to single out its alternative model - anti-anthropomorphism. It is believed that this outwardly opposite type of attitude to the world is brought to life by the processes of a person's awareness of his specialness. Man begins to separate himself from nature. He is a qualitatively different, socio-cultural being. This worldview takes shape in later eras, when science, philosophy, and art arise. However, in our opinion, this conclusion can be questioned. What is usually called anti-anthropomorphism is just a kind of reverse transfer, a process that indicates that anthropomorphism is becoming more complex in form and structure. Therefore, it is wrong to say that anthropomorphism is characteristic only for the undeveloped stages of the historical process or plays only the role of beautiful metaphors that aestheticize the relationship of man to the world. We can say that anthropomorphism and anti-anthropomorphism are two sides of the same coin. Their distinction is only an expression of the complication of the phenomenon of anthropomorphization. For brevity, we will use one concept - anthropomorphism, without dwelling on the differences between both forms.

It is important to note that judgments that allow us to consider anthropomorphism from the point of view of the mechanism already exist in philological analysis. We are talking about the division of anthropomorphisms into lexical and syntactic ones. Lexical anthropomorphisms are lexical units representing the names of objects that are not parts of the human body, do not have human qualities, but at the same time etymologically go back to them. Let us give only two examples - the leg (of the table), the back (of the chair). Syntactic anthropomorphism indicates the relationship of objects that do not have human qualities, but are able to "act like a human" (for example, the violence of the elements, the breath of the sea). Syntactic anthropomorphism is "more complicated" than lexical one, as it indicates the level of relations. This is what makes this kind of anthropomorphism the most interesting heuristically for us, since philosophy works precisely with the relations of forms. Acting in the logic of transformed forms, anthropomorphism makes the world commensurate with a person, not primitivizing this world, but acting at the level of one or another form of worldview.

That is why we cannot agree with the opinion existing in linguistics and philosophy that the abundance of anthropomorphisms in speech is one of the indicators of the distortion of truth in the course of using natural language. So, H. Weinrich says that “a linguistic lie, if we understand things literally, is the majority of such rhetorical figures as euphemisms, hyperbole . .. taboo words, anthropomorphisms, etc.” [5]. J. Derrida writes: “What, then, is truth? Nietzsche asks. - Marching army. anthropomorphisms.. truths are illusions that have forgotten about this illusory nature of theirs” (quoted from [6, p. 55]). However, in our opinion, this is too narrow an understanding of anthropomorphism, which is characteristic of the position of extreme rationalism (no matter how strange it sounds). We start from a different point of view. For us, the anthropomorphic form may at its core contain truth. That is why we have the opportunity to consider anthropomorphisms as real forms of cognition, and not as relics of consciousness.

In scientific knowledge, anthropomorphism also acts as a transformed form of consciousness. Anthropomorphic in origin are, for example, the words "work", "stress", etc., although their modern meaning no longer correlates with the original. With the development of science, anthropomorphism is not ousted from human consciousness; in some areas of knowledge, anthropomorphic ideas turn out to be very strong (for example, in zoopsychology). In modern scientific, technical, in particular cybernetic, literature, the anthropomorphic use of concepts (“lifespan” of particles, a machine “remembers”, “solves a problem”, etc.) is based on the objective similarity of the principles of functioning and results of actions of a person and a machine and is quite legitimate, if the difference between the processes in essence is taken into account [7]. Thus, anthropomorphic nominations, as we have already said, are widespread in computer terminology. Interestingly, from the standpoint of anthropomorphism, one can even consider the development of certain theoretical forms. L.S. Vygotsky in his work “The Historical Meaning of the Psychological Crisis” speaks of the anthropomorphic principle of constructing a theory [8, p. 293296], more accurately conveys I. Pavlov's doubts about the possibility of constructing a theory

not according to the genetic, but according to the anthropological principle. However, Vygotsky notes, the anthropomorphic approach can be considered as logical in relation to the first, historical one, which means that it is sometimes theoretically more consistent. "Human anatomy is the key to monkey anatomy" [9, p. 731].

"The second wind" in scientific knowledge anthropomorphism receives in socio-humanitarian studies, in particular in the historical sciences. Historical science is "not afraid" of anthropomorphism; it makes it its cognitive means. Having considered anthropomorphism in historical knowledge, one can understand the boundaries of anthropomorphism as a method of scientific knowledge and, even more broadly, human knowledge of the world, since the experience of historical science is useful in general theoretical terms. The main, basic principle of a person's attitude to the knowledge of history is the principle of understanding. The concept of understanding that has developed in history is evidence of historical anthropomorphism, according to which a person, in the process of knowing history, “dips”, “introduces himself” into the knowable forms of historical knowledge, “transfers” his human qualities into those plots, events that are known to him . In this process, the subjective characteristics of a person are transferred to an object. The historian does not simply "transfer" the past into the present, but sees himself in the past (anthropomorphizes it). There is a process of likening a person in history to a modern person.

Anthropomorphism manifests itself both in the ontological aspect (in the analysis of a person as a subject of history, his place and role in the formation of the past, etc.), and in the epistemological aspect (the indissolubility of the subject and object of cognition, understanding the knowledge gained, "experiencing" and "getting used to »historian in the mastered materials of the past, their axiologization).

Ontologically man is included in history through his activity. “History,” emphasizes Marx, “does nothing, it 'possesses no immense wealth', it 'doesn't fight any battles'! Not “history”, but precisely a person, a real, living person - that is who does all this, possesses everything and fights for everything. “History” is not some special person who uses man as a means to achieve his goals. History is nothing but the activity of a man pursuing his goals” [10, p. 102].

Anthropomorphism as an epistemological principle makes it possible to understand the special role of the subject in the process of cognition (including historical). In the process of cognition, the historian mentally “transfers himself” into the subject of science, blurs the line between the object and the subject, but at the same time he also anthropomorphizes himself (a second anthropomorphization occurs - after the historian “transferred” his features, feelings to history, he tries to “ to shift the essence of history onto oneself). For example, V. Dilthey says: "What a person is, only his history can tell him." The concepts of life and historical reality are often used by Dilthey as equivalent: “Life. in its material is one with history. History is just life, viewed from the point of view of a whole humanity. (quoted from [11]).

The philosophical study of anthropomorphism has great prospects precisely within the framework of the philosophy of history, social philosophy and philosophy of science. There is a great tradition of considering anthropomorphism as a way of knowing the world in Russian philosophy. For example, N.A. Berdyaev noted that philosophy “knows being from man and through man, sees in man the key to meaning” [12, p. 24].

Almost all Russian cosmism uses anthropomorphic intuitions [13]. However, Russian philosophy considers a person mainly in the religious and theological tradition, which means that the very “translation” of the problem into the space of social epistemology, the philosophy of history can be of great importance. Any anthropological problematic implies an included interest in anthropomorphism, although this is not always clearly formulated. For example, in 2009Kazan hosted the 1st All-Russian Scientific Conference “Anthropological Proportionality”, the very name of which refers us to the problem of anthropomorphization of the world [14].

So, anthropomorphism is a real form of human exploration of the world. He makes closer to a person that which was alien to him, external, “external”. Doesn't it detract from objectivity in knowledge, because if subjectivity prevails over objectivity, there is a possibility of knowledge distortion? No, objectivity is supplemented by the subjective, the range of content of knowledge about the past in and for a person is expanding. Anthropomorphism is a way, a form, thanks to which an object becomes consistent with human capabilities.

Anthropomorphism has truly high heuristic possibilities, which are used not only by ordinary, but also by theoretical, scientific consciousness. It can be said that anthropomorphism is a peculiar form of collecting a person, which is used by him as a "language of speaking" about the world in the knowledge of this world and himself.

Summary

T.A. Titova. Anthropomorphism as a Form of the World Cognition.

The article regards the problem of anthropomorphism in philosophy. Its cognitive and heuristic capacities are shown in various spheres of social humanitarian sciences.

Key words: anthropomorphism, anti-anthropomorphism, anthropomorphism as a worldview, historical anthropomorphism.

Literature

1. Ivanov L. Anthropomorphism. - URL: http://www.krugosvet.ru/enc/gumanitarnye_nauki/lingvistika/ANTROPOMORFIZM.html, free.

2. Personification, prosopopoeia, personification // Bolshaya Sov. encycle. - URL: http://slovari.yandex.ru, free.

3. Chanyshev A.N. Course of lectures on ancient philosophy. - M.: Higher. school, 1981. - 374 p. 9ferance. - Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. -160 p.

7. Kostelovsky V.A. Anthropomorphism // Bolshaya Sov. encycle. - URL: http://dictionary. yandex.ru, free.

8. Vygotsky LS The historical meaning of the psychological crisis. Methodological research // Vygotsky L.S. Sobr. cit.: in 6 volumes - M .: Pedagogy, 1982. -T. 1. - S. 291 - 436.

9. Marx K. From the manuscript of the inheritance of K.

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