C. Lloyd Morgan - Ethology - Morgan's Canon

Morgan's Canon

As a specialised form of Occam's razor, Morgan's canon played a critical role in the growth of behaviourism in twentieth century academic psychology. The canon states In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher mental faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale. For example, an entity should only be considered conscious if there is no other explanation for its behaviour. As the study of animal cognition has become popular, a disciplined use of Lloyd Morgan's canon has become important.

W.H. Thorpe commented as follows:

"The importance of this was enormous... to the modern ethologist dealing with higher animals and faced as he is with ever-increasing evidence for the complexity of perceptual organization... the very reverse of Morgan's canon often proves to be the best strategy".

The development of Morgan's canon derived partly from his careful observations of behaviour. This provided cases where behaviour that seemed to imply higher mental processes could be explained by simple trial and error learning (what we would now call operant conditioning). An example is the skilful way in which his terrier Tony opened the garden gate, easily understood as an insightful act by someone seeing the final behaviour. Lloyd Morgan, however, had watched and recorded the series of approximations by which the dog had gradually learned the response, and could demonstrate that no insight was required to explain it.