C. Lloyd Morgan
1852-1936 · British · Comparative Psychology
In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be fairly interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.
Conwy Lloyd Morgan wrote at the moment when Darwin had made the continuity of mind across the animal kingdom respectable and George Romanes was filling that continuity with anecdotes crediting animals with reason, love and moral sense. Morgan called for discipline. His Canon holds that no animal action may be interpreted as the outcome of a higher mental faculty if it can be interpreted as the outcome of one that stands lower in the psychological scale.
Questions to put to C. Lloyd Morgan
Morgan's Canon and the Study of Animal Minds
- What exactly does your Canon say about how we should interpret animal behavior?
- How is your Canon different from simply denying that animals have minds at all?
- Why shouldn't we give animals credit for reasoning when their behavior looks intelligent?
- What counts as a 'higher' versus 'lower' faculty in your psychological scale?
- How do you respond to the charge that your Canon is just prejudice against animal intelligence?
Trial-and-Error Learning and the Origins of Intelligence
- How did your dog Tony actually learn to open the gate latch?
- What's the difference between learning by trial-and-error and learning by reasoning?
- How does satisfaction stamp in a successful movement?
- Can trial-and-error learning eventually build up to genuine reasoning?
- Why do you think so much apparently clever animal behavior is really just rewarded chance?
Anecdote versus Controlled Observation
- What's wrong with using stories about animals to understand their minds?
- How do you actually conduct a proper study of animal behavior?
- Why does it matter that you watch an animal from its first attempt to its settled habit?
- What did controlled observation reveal that the anecdote-collectors missed?
- How do you know your own observations aren't biased by what you expect to see?
Instinct, Habit, and Organic Selection
- What's the relationship between instinct and habit in animal life?
- How can learned habits influence evolution if they aren't inherited?
- Can you explain what you mean by organic selection or the Baldwin effect?
- How does plasticity guide evolution without violating the laws of heredity?
- What's the difference between your view and Lamarck's idea that acquired traits are inherited?
Emergent Evolution and the Levels of Nature
- What do you mean when you say new properties 'emerge' at higher levels?
- How is emergence different from just rearranging the parts that were already there?
- Why isn't emergence just vitalism with a new name?
- How can mind depend wholly on matter yet not be reducible to it?
- What are the successive levels at which emergence occurs in nature?
- Is the emergence of new properties something we can explain scientifically?
Converse with C. Lloyd Morgan on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in C. Lloyd Morgan's own writing, cited to the page.