If we're talking about the instinctive intuitions, the ones that Daniel Dennett would say apply to the "intentional stance," and that evolved to enable us to socialize smoothly with each other (to read our minds and to negotiate social hierarchies), the idea that these intuitions are insights into nature conflicts with scientific objectifications.

Does nature consist of mindless physicality or is animism or theism true? Animism's relevance, I suspect, is that it was a kind of therapy. The mental projections said more about us and the structure of our mind than about the nature of an inhuman cosmos. Nature at large is either personal or impersonal. Much follows either way.