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It's certainly not just sci-fi writers who go for this sort of reasoning. I knew a theology professor who would make mistakes like this on a consistent basis. For example, he would raise questions about whether there was an evolutionary pressure for babies to evolve to be cute, without even considering the possibility that we might evolve to find babies cute. It struck me as being much worse than the sort of unthinking assumption that goes into Attack of the Fifty Foot Whatever sci fi stories, since his preconceptions were actually hindering him in fairly serious attempts to understand the real world.
In response to
Mind Projection Fallacy
In case you hadn't noticed, this is a general problem. And you're right, the observer is not some guy speaking from some immutable "neutral point of view" but it's an error made very commonly by certain "scientists" every day. His error was not one of theology, but one commonly made by "evolutionary psychologists". But let's consider this case: if evolution has free dibs on everything, and it lacks any teleological component whatsoever, then what are we to say about your status as a rational being?
In response to
Mind Projection Fallacy
Speaking of interspecies vs intraspecies reproductive fitness evaluation - a human may judge a member of its own species (from a distant end of the genetic spectrum, i.e., whitest of the white vs. blackest of the black) less desirable than some hypothetical alien species with appropriately bulbous forms and necessary orifices or extrusions.
Are you sexually attracted to manikins?
In response to
Mind Projection Fallacy
If I assume that others have minds like mine I surely would also assume they "project" the same properties, so calling them "mental projection" is not likely to make this error go away. Conversely if I establish that a certain property is a real, non-projected property of an object, that doesn't entitle me to assume that it will be perceived by an alien with a different evolutionary history. After all, humans only perceive a tiny percentage of the actual properties of objects. So I think that the "mind projection error" and the "all minds are alike" error are quite different.
Your error is falsely conclude that he fallacy is essential to human thinking, that the properties projected are always and the same across the board, and that they cannot differ. And what the heck does "human only perceive a tiny percentage of the actual properties of objects" even mean? We certainly don't know all there is about a thing, but what properties are you even talking about and how?
In response to
Mind Projection Fallacy
It's not about what the bug-eyed monster considers sexy. It's about what the human reader considers sexy.
Exactly. I never conceived of the alien taking the woman because she was attractive. Weaker perhaps, but not because he found her sexy. Damsel in distress. I think it is your, author of this article, who suffered from mind projection fallacy, not necessarily the creators of the comic or the rest of the audience. To me, from the point of view of the story, it was just a tragic accident that the woman being hauled off was one I found beautiful.
In response to
Mind Projection Fallacy
Psy-Kosh,
We share an evolutionary history with different animals on earth. There could be attractive properties in animals that give us a similar representation of sexiness as they do to their own species. Same reason we find you will find different creatures finding other creatures cute e.g. humans to dogs and gorilla to human.
Additionally, there has been cases where dolphins attempted to sexually engage with humans. An intelligent alien will have a shared ancestry and therefore will not have sexiness representations from "sexual properties" exhibited in earth's creatures.
That's a rather weak explanation because you're implying the presence of causes without elucidating them, or you're creating a cause out of evolution, which is not a cause.
From the standpoint of being, we apprehend the accidental properties of a thing first, but from the point of view of the intellect, we apprehend "gorillaness" first, so in the context of gorillaness, sexiness is impossible in relation to human. One cannot find a gorilla sexy unless one is confused in some way. This is why zoophilia is a mental disorder.
You can find something about a gorilla beautiful, certainly, but this is not the same as sexy.
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Is "the world is full of people" an example of the mind-projection fallacy? (Compare to "we can both recognize the pattern 'person' at a high-level in our multi-leveled models of levelless reality")
Why would it be? It's an ontological statement about the existence of many instances of what you have identified as persons. It doesn't attribute anything to them. And following your pseudotechnical jargon, why would you presume the pal you're speaking to ("we both recognize...") is nothing but another instance of this "pattern"? Your biased. You're exempting someone because you want them to be a person.