But a whole lot more useful than C3PO.

Bah! I'd like to see it pull off a "camp" walk

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But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about: Jayutah


I are Learnding.

Well, well. Coincidence is fun, isn't it?

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Quaeso quousque humi defixa tua mens erit? Nonne aspicis, quae in templa veneris?

Is that from the Ministry of Funny Walks?

I had an old beater car when I was a teenager. You had to manage the gas and brakes just right or it would stall out at every stop. Personifying that car helped me be patient with her and always drive her the way she wanted to be driven. Otherwise I was stuck walking.

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Spock Jenkins of the Vulcan Jenkins'.

Quite possibly

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But you're sure the astronauts are lying; you just don't seem to know what they're lying about: Jayutah


I are Learnding.

Camp. Ministery. Funny walks.... why is it that I have a particular scene from "Shanghai Noon" come to mind?

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

Because it helps us get through our hard, lonely lives.

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

For no reason I can understand, I tend to think of Spirit as "he" and Opportunity as "she". I've never named a car or a computer, although I've certainly cursed at them a time or two.

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Cum catapultae proscribeantur tum soli proscripti catapultas habeant.

Me, too! Especially as we hear about Oppie more, and we all know that girls call home more often than boys when on trips. My dad's car is the only car I've ever named. Sweet little silver '06 Toyota Scion Prius. We call her Greenbean. Every Prius I see, I now secretly think of as "Somebody else's Greenbean."

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"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek
"Carl Sagan sent a message to ET,
Neil Armstrong walked in the Sea of Tranquility
Steve Squyers built Spirit and Opportunity
Dan Haylen upchucked in zero gravity." -Brent Simon, The Space Camp Song

I believe it's for the same reason that a dog who's neglected by his owners will develop a fondness for carrying around a toy bunny.

He's lonely.

I don't see kids with healthy attachments to their parents and others develop these traits. That doesn't mean they don't have their own issues...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

I don't think it's a trait that develops, but rather is unlearned. Babies all start out being unable to distinguish living from nonliving, and slowly learn to create exclusive categories for them. Or not, as the case may be. There are still many peoples in the world who believe that each thing has its own 'spirit' or anima.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
Illuminati's Razor-The most complicatedly evil answer is usually the most correct answer. - Fazor
"Every book is a children's book if the kid can read." - Mitch Hedberg
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Kids minds love to explore. Every child I saw even myself passed this stage. I see it in my son, talking to his toys like he can actually having a conversation with it. And may be you and others have been like that when we were kids.

It doesn't mean my son doesn't have a healthy attachment with me .
It's the stage where the motors skills of a child is developing and this toys are tools in helping them as they grow up .

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

for some reason, i just remembered a scene in the move "Coneheads" where Dan Aykroyd's character is talking about his personal "conveyance that's named a man who built cars, a dead president, and the first planet from the sun"..
or something like that..
he owned a Ford Lincoln Mercury Tempo, i think.

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"blacker than the blackest black... times infinity."- Nathan Explosion
The.. Best.. Thread..Ever...

Disagree with Mugaliens- agree with you.

I didn't comment after Mugaliens because I watched Nick, and he didn't seem very "attached" to inanimate objects. There's nothing he carries around with him anywhere. He likes his things and takes care of them, but still treats them as inanimate...

So I didn't know how to respond.

Same with my son, he loves his toys, he's fond of playing with them. He enjoys playing with the whole day and he never got tired of it.

These toys are part of his life as he grows up.

And he still runs to me and cuddle adn talk about lots of things and about his toys over and over when I come home.
We only have each other , in this world, and I love him so much.

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Jean
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"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing." - Albert Einsteiin

Nobody has yet mentioned that this is a very ancient practice. The extension of personality to places, trees, rocks, the very forces of nature themselves manifest as gods, spirits, guardians, etc.. as a way to seek protection, be able to exert influence, etc.. was something that went on for millenia, and still does to a certain extent. Whatever the psychological spark that triggers that sort of behaviour, it considerably pre-dates motorbikes, cars and suchlike.

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I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, was in no way fair comment and was motivated purely by malice. I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

I think of it as a metaphor: an efficient shortcut for describing things, traits, and events that would otherwise be harder to describe. Examples most of us here are familiar with, even coming from people who don't personify objects or believe in spirits, are scientists describing physical phenomena as if they were the results of choices made by personalities.

They'll talk about atoms and molecules as liking/wanting to interact with each other in certain human-sounding ways or "avoiding" doing so, instead of always describing the mechanisms more literaly in terms of positive and negative charges at various distances from each other. They'll talk about the Uncertainty Principle in terms of the universe not knowing stuff about the particle, or not making its mind up, despite the UP being arguably the perfect opportunity to show how the universe is not guided by a decision-making mind. They'll describe events of evolution as if species were deciding what to do next in response to challenges and individuals (even in species with no nervous systems) were personally motivated to live long and reproduce, and refer to body "designs" and "plans" as if organisms had been designed and planned, even if they're the very same people who argue at other times against such thinking, because they know it's technically wrong but still find it the best way to talk about things instead of always struggling to come up with a more literally precise wording.

It's not normally a matter of distorted belief in the nature of things. It's just an attempt to describe something that's easiest to describe as if it were acting like a person even if you know it isn't. Seriously, look back over some of the explanations you've used for almost any scientific subject before, and try to picture how you'd reword it without sounding like you're talking about big-brained animal behavior. You'd even have to take out words like "organized" and "arrangement" because they're short ways of saying someone organized or arranged things. It can be very hard to do and lead to really long, awkward, roundabout babblation.

The only catch is that such metaphorical thinking can be taken too far...

The question is " Why do humans personify inanimate objects?"

The answer has nothing to do with human conditioning whatsoever. It has to do with the brain and how it has evolved and how it continues to have its parts cross-talking to other parts with very particular direction. It is why metaphors exist and why we say such things as "sharp cheddar cheese" when we all know that none of us ever cut his or her finger on cheese. The TPO junction in the brain is where the occipital, parietal and temporal lobes all meet and those brain parts that deal with shape (the angular gyri) are located right near where those parts that deal with taste and smell and shape and color and sound, depending upon which side this occurs.

When patients of Ramachandran are shown two pics, one of a cloud and the other of a lightning bolt, they are asked to name one "booba" and the other "kikki". It doesn't matter what country or culture the person comes from, English-speaking or not. Look in the mirror when you say each word and then watch the shape of your mouth when you say the word. Kikki comes close to the shape of the lightning bolt and booba makes your mouth shape more like the cloud. The word "sina"(pronounced "see-nah") means "tomorrow in one African language. Look in the mirror and say it. Your mouth starts out flat and horizontal, like the horizon. It finishes with the shape of the sun.

Those are not the only examples. Ramchandran has a very easy reading book with an outstanding notes that accompany it. Much of the latest experiments with the brain confirm his findings.

http://www.amazon.com/Brief-Tour-Hum...2493636&sr=1-1