Pragmamorphism

Anthropomorphism means attributing the characteristics of human beings to inanimate things or animals. I have invented the word “pragmamorphism” as a shorthand abstraction for the attribution of the properties of inanimate things to human beings. One of the meanings of the Greek word pragma is “a material object.”

Being pragmamorphic sounds equivalent to taking a scientific attitude toward the world, but it easily evolves into dull scientism. It’s pragmamorphic to equate material correlates with human psychological states—to equate PET scans, say, with emotion. It’s also pragmamorphic to ignore human qualities you cannot measure.

We have discovered useful metrics for material objects—length, temperature, pressure, volume, kinetic energy, etc. “Pragmamorphism” is a good word for the attempt to assign such one-dimensional thing-metrics to the mental qualities of humans. IQ, a “length scale” for intelligence, is a result of pragmamorphism. But intelligence is more diffuse than linear.

John Brockman, This Will Make You Smarter (2012-02-14)

• cognition
• modeling