From an early age, we assign purpose to objects and events, preferring this reasoning to random chance. Children assume, for instance, that pointy rocks are that way because they don’t want you to sit on them. When we encounter something, we first need to determine what sort of thing it is. Inanimate objects and plants generally do not move and can be evaluated from physics alone. However, by attributing intention to animals and even objects, we are able to make fast decisions about the likely behaviour of that being. This was essential in our hunter­gatherer days to avoid being eaten by predators. The anthropologist Stewart Guthrie made the point that survival in our evolutionary past meant that we interpret ambiguous objects as agents with human mental characteristics, as those are the mental processes which we understand. Ambiguous events are caused by such agents. This results in a perceptual system strongly biased towards anthropomorphism. Therefore, we tend to assume intention even where there is none. This would have arisen as a survival mechanism. If a lion is about to attack you, you need to react quickly, given its probable intention to kill you. By the time you have realized that the design of its teeth and claws could kill you, you are dead. So, assuming intent, without detailed design analysis or understanding of the physics, has saved your life.