I'm a bit mixed up about this term, and seek enlightenment.

A quick google turned up a definition by John Ruskin, credited with coining the term in 1856. He wrote: "All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the 'pathetic fallacy.'"

I read this to mean that, in the grip of strong emotions, we may not accurately perceive or completely understand what is going on around us (e.g. people unable to accurately recall the sequence of events, or details of events, during natural disasters). But I suspect he means something more than this.

I then found another definition (lost the source, sorry): "ascribing objective truth to personal, subjective feelings." This is what I have generally understood this term to mean - that because I feel like something should be the right answer, or should be true, I judge it to be so, and am thus pathetically fallacious.

However, the most common definition I found was "the ascription of human traits or feelings to inanimate nature (as in cruel sea)" - this example from MW, but I found lots like this. I also found some good discussion of how the Ruskin definition leads into this third one, in that ascribing human traits to inaminate nature is a manifestation of our false impressions, driven by emotion - our emotions tells us the sea is cruel as it washes our last cold beer out to sea - but it ain't really, it ain't even thirsty.

Anyway - where in this range of definitions do you all see this term?