Bachelor of Philosophy Sample Thesis Prospectus
(Philosophy)
Title: Morgan’s Canon: A Flawed Principle for the Interpretation of Animal
Behavior
Less than two centuries ago, some natural philosophers speculated that all things had their ontological place on a “chain of being.” God occupied the position of greatest perfection; humans were farther down on the scale but still above all other mortal creatures. Although this imagery is supposed to carry little weight in the life sciences (the progeny, as it were, of natural philosophy), I will argue that it still finds veiled expression in a methodological principle used by comparative psychologists. I refer to the maxim put forth by Conwy Lloyd Morgan, which is known as Morgan’s
Canon: “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.” That is, when theorizing about animal behavior, once should not invoke higher mental processes if lower mental processes are sufficient to explain the observed facts.
The aim of my thesis is to show that the concepts of “higher” and “lower” psychical abilities employed in this directive derive from an anthropocentrism akin to that of the “chain of being” metaphor. An arrangement of mental processes in a single linear order is no better than the contention that we can arrange beings
themselves in such an order. For regardless of which category one uses, the resulting orders usually turn out to be identical: in what I doubt is a mere coincidence, both humans and their mental processes end up at the top of the order without fail. However, different species exhibit different psychical faculties. An attempt to evaluate mental processes along just one dimension is myopic, because those typical of any given species have evolved as (or, to be precise, possibly as a consequence of) species-specific adaptations to their particular niches. Although another species’ set of mental faculties may not support the performance of some tasks at which humans are adapt, it may facilitate high proficiencies in other tasks.
The conceptualization of the mental processes as a part of a unitary continuum from higher to lower risks the unwarranted devaluation of typically non-human faculties.
I do not intend to argue that one should not compare mental abilities across species. It is legitimate to show that different species have diverse aptitudes to perform tasks that require particular mental processes. For example, one could justifiably demonstrate through experiment that humans are better at abstract reasoning than chimpanzees, provided that the conditions of the experiments are tailored to experiences appropriate to each species. That is, if one were testing chimpanzees for abstract reasoning abilities using their responses to images of human tools, another could object that the images have a meaning for humans that they do not have for chimpanzees. One should not expect chimpanzees to exhibit an ability to form an abstract category based on items they rarely encounter in their environment. As a result of the experiment’s biased construction, humans would have an unfair advantage.
Rather, my argument is that the formation of abstract categories is not necessarily a higher mental process than, say, the capacity for instinctual responses to a particular stimuli. For if by “higher” one means “more adaptive,” one must admit that the adaptivity of any psychical faculty is relative to the environment in

which it is employed. (Let us call the antecedent of the foregoing conditional the
“adaptivity definition” of higher psychical process.) Perhaps in a fast-paced, extremely perilous environment, the ability to respond instinctually to a particular stimulus is more adaptive than abstraction. Hume says as much when touting the advantage of instinct over reason. Of course, experienced environmental pressures differ from one species to another. Given the adaptivity definition, the postulation of a universal continuum of mental processes makes little sense, and it should not serve as the basis for any methodological maxim.
However, perhaps by labeling a mental process as “higher” one intends only to imply that it is more complex than others. (I call this the “complexity definition” of higher psychical processes.) If so, one must explain exactly what complexity means in psychology. Generally, something considered to be complex has many interrelated, specialized components—but how is such a concept properly applied to mental processes? There is no precise answer to this question that enjoys widespread consensus. However, a general formulation with which many would agree is the following: the more mental representations and relationships among them that are involved in the execution of a mental process, the more complex it is.
Once could claim, for instance, that deductive reasoning is more complex than trial and error learning because the former involves the construction of more relationships between representations than the latter does. (I am not claiming that this argument is sound, but rather that it might be sound for the sake of offering a simple example.
If we can order mental processes on the basis of their relative complexities, then it would seem that the categories of “higher” and “lower” employed by Morgan are not necessarily flawed.
Regardless, even if these classifications can be applied fairly to mental processes, it does not follow that Morgan’s Canon should be brought to bear on all cases. Other species’ environments place demands on them that humans do not face. Non-human animals have developed mental processes to help meet those demands; and it sis probable that some or even many of these are more complex than their human analogues. For example, aurally based spatial perception is much less developed in humans than it bats. We should apply the Canon with great caution, and only in cases where the mental process under investigation is highly developed in humans and not likely to be so in the animal ( because of the demands of its environment). Further, given that there is little agreement about what specific form the complexity definition should take, we should be reluctant to use it to order mental processes anyway.
To explain the ideas summarized above, my thesis will draw heavily on the literature of comparative psychology. I plan to divide the work into three main parts. The first section will provide background information. Specifically, I will present Morgan’s Canon in detail, exercising a careful, thorough interpretation of his writings. This section will also include a discussion of the concept of “mental process” from the point of view of contemporary philosophy of mind. I will also produce evidence that Morgan’s Canon is still influential in comparative psychology today, despite its relatively old provenance in the early 20 th century. To support this contention, I will examine some of the findings and methodologies of contemporary comparative psychologists for evidence of the Canon’s influence.
The second section, the heart of my thesis, will be devoted to my criticism of
Morgan’s Canon (as described in the previous paragraphs). I intend to show how an anthropocentric approach to comparative psychology forecloses promising areas of

inquiry with respect to animal minds. I hope to accomplish this aim through presentation of the work of a comparative psychologist whose methodology and conclusions have been influenced either implicitly or explicitly by Morgan’s Canon.
To illustrate the potential negative consequences of the adaptivity definition, I intend to look for instances in which the principle would deny the attribution of mental process to an animal solely because other process was considered to be higher than another that could adequately account for the appearances. Given such a case, I will arguer that the supposedly “higher” mental process was ruled out without sufficient reason, since the conclusion was based on an unjustified linear ordering of psychical faculties.
In the third section I will formulate objections to my position. For instance, one such objection is that since certain species share an evolutionary lineage and/or an ecological niche, the evaluation of their mental processes by the same standards is justified. Finally, I will argue that comparative psychology needs a methodological replacement for Morgan’s Canon. Based on my criticisms of the Canon, I will outline briefly some requirements that such a replacement should meet, and suggest that its formulation is a promising area for the future of research and reflection.