Critical anthropomorphism
perspective in the study of animal behavior
Critical anthropomorphism (from ethology and comparative psychology) refers to a perspective in the study of animal behavior. It uses scientific knowledge of the species, its perceptual world, and ecological and evolutionary history to generate hypotheses through the lens of the sentience of the observer. The term is of particular relevance to mentalistic behavioral mechanisms, and its application involves using "natural history, our perceptions, intuitions, feelings, careful behavioral descriptions, identifying with the animal, optimization models, previous studies, and so forth in order to generate ideas that may prove useful in gaining understanding and the ability to predict outcomes of planned (experimental) and unplanned interventions".
Background
Gordon Burghardt introduced the term critical anthropomorphism in the mid-1980s in an essay tracing historical views on animal awareness and cognition. Though not by name, the concept of critical anthropomorphism has historical roots dating to Jakob von Uexküll's umwelt and innenwelt (German for "environment/surroundings" and "inner world", respectively). Jakob von Uexküll studied numerous organisms with diverse sensory processes, concluding that the human understanding of these processes and the resulting perceptions (the innenwelt), shape human insight regarding the behavior and experiences of nonhuman species. von Uexküll pointed out that although different species share the same physical environment, the relationship between the innenwelt and umwelt of each species is unique due to their adaptively specialized capacities. The concepts of the umwelt and innenwelt originated from classical ethology, prompting scientists including Nikolaas Tinbergen, Konrad Lorenz, Karl von Frisch to consider the role of subjectivity in the design, observation, and interpretation of research studies involving nonhuman species. As noted by Burghardt, critically anthropomorphic approaches are evident in early animal work that recognized the possibility of cognitive processes in animals. Edward Chace Tolman's work on cognitive maps, for example, stands as an early example of critical anthropomorphism.
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This entry incorporates text from “Critical anthropomorphism” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.