How Lloyd Morgan's canon backfired

✍ Scribed by Senior Lecturer Alan Costall

• Book ID: 102678324
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 768 KB
• Volume: 29
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-5061
• DOI: 10.1002/1520-6696(199304)29:2<113::aid-jhbs2300290203>3.0.co;2-g

✦ Synopsis

Lloyd Morgan's Canon is usually represented as a brave step towards mechanistic behaviourism. Morgan himself, however, was convinced that the behaviour of animals and humans could only be treated in intentionalist terms. In fact, not only the spirit but the details of his Canon have been consistently misunderstood. It was turned around by Neo-Cartesians within psychology and evolutionary biology to attack the very ground that Morgan shared with Darwin-the assumption that organisms are "no mere puppets in the hand of circumstances." Morgan did not formulate his Canon in "revolt" against Romanes's anthropomorphic approach to comparative psychology.

An examination of Morgan's early views reveals that his Canon represented a move towards, not against, Romanes's idea of an animal psychology. Before the Canon, Morgan had denied the very possibility of a comparative psychology.