Perception of things as tools, for example, occurs before or in concert with perception of things as objects. We see what things mean just as fast or faster than we see what they are.33 Perception of things as entities with personality also occurs before perception of things as things. This is particularly true of the action of others,34 living others, but we also see the non-living “objective world” as animated, with purpose and intent. This is because of the operation of what psychologists have called “the hyperactive agency detector” within us.35 We evolved, over millennia, within intensely
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