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Doing Away with Morgan 'S Canon Doing Away with Morgan’ s Canon SIMON FITZPATRICK Abstract : Morgan ’ s Canon is a very widely endorsed methodological principle in animal psychology, believed to be vital for a rigorous, scientifi c approach to the study of animal cognition. In contrast I argue that Morgan ’ s Canon is unjustifi ed, pernicious and unnecessary. I identify two main versions of the Canon and show that they both suffer from very serious problems. I then suggest an alternative methodological principle that captures all of the genuine methodological benefi ts that Morgan ’ s Canon can bring but suffers from none of its problems. 1. Introduction Morgan ’ s Canon is a very widely endorsed methodological principle in animal psychology. Proposed at the end of the 19th century by the British comparative psychologist Conwy Lloyd Morgan, it states that: In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise 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 (Morgan, 1894 , p. 53). This principle has played a central role in subsequent scientifi c and philosophical work into the nature of non-human animal minds. So central in fact that it has been described as ‘ possibly the most important single sentence in the history of the study of animal behaviour ’ ( Galef, 1996, p. 9; cited in Radick, 2000 , p. 3). Morgan ’ s Canon has attained this eminent status because it has been seen as a necessary component of a suitably rigorous approach to explaining animal behaviour. According to a recent textbook, ‘ Morgan ’ s Canon … has enabled us to approach the analysis of behaviour sensibly and to avoid the superfi cial anthropomorphism which led to many absurdities in the past ’ ( Manning and Dawkins, 1998 , p. 295). One of the classic past ‘ absurdities ’ referred to here is the case of ‘ Clever Hans ’ , the early 20th century horse that was reputed to be able to answer arithmetical questions via a language of hoof-tapping and head-shaking. Thanks to George Botterill, Paul Faulkner, David Liggins, Peter Lipton, Robert Lurz, Gregory Radick and two anonymous referees for Mind & Language for helpful discussion and comments on earlier versions of this paper. Particular thanks go to Stephen Laurence who provided invaluable feedback on several draft versions. Thanks also to audiences at the Universities of Leeds, Oxford and Sheffi eld where versions of this paper were presented. Address for correspondence: Department of Philosophy, University of Sheffi eld, Arts Tower, Western Bank, Sheffi eld, S10 2TN, UK. Email: s.fi tzpatrick@sheffi eld.ac.uk Mind & Language, Vol. 23 No. 2 April 2008, pp. 224–246. © 2008 The Author Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Doing Away with Morgan’ s Canon 2 2 5 Hans ’ abilities were acclaimed in many circles, until an investigation led by Otto Pfungst eventually showed that Hans had merely been responding to subtle visual cues unintentionally provided by the audience. Though the original formulation of Morgan ’ s Canon predates the Clever Hans debacle, this famous case of mistaken attribution of sophisticated cognitive capacities to an animal is now presented as the paradigm illustration of why Morgan’ s Canon should be adhered to. It is deemed to be the necessary antidote for the methodological errors that this and other early work in animal psychology fell prey to. 1 Morgan ’ s Canon is thus seen as a major landmark in the professionalisation of animal psychology, helping ‘ to separate science from its merely anecdotal and anthropomorphising ancestors and neighbours ’ ( Wilder, 1996, p. 38). Support for Morgan ’ s Canon, though not completely universal,2 is still extremely widespread in modern discussions about animal minds. Indeed most psychologists and philosophers simply take Morgan ’ s Canon for granted: it is assumed to be self- evidently reasonable, requiring no detailed defence or explication. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether Morgan ’ s Canon is in fact a good methodological principle. My conclusion will be an emphatic no . I will argue that far from being the antidote to the methodological problems facing animal psychology and for cases like Clever Hans, Morgan ’ s Canon has been, and remains, a persistent impediment to progress. Consequently, Morgan ’ s Canon ought to be abandoned. 3 1 Morgan formulated his Canon in response to early Darwinian comparative psychologists ( Darwin, 1871; Romanes, 1882 ) who had made very bold claims about the psychological capacities of animals on the basis of what he saw as fl imsy anecdotal evidence ( Boakes, 1984 ). 2 In particular those associated with the fi eld of ‘ cognitive ethology ’ (e.g. Griffi n, 1976; Allen and Bekoff, 1997 ; Tomasello and Call, 1997 ) are much less likely to express support for Morgan ’ s Canon and some have been openly critical of the principle. 3 Though Morgan ’ s Canon has not received the critical attention it deserves, this is not to say that Morgan’ s Canon has received no critical attention at all. Previous commentators have criticised aspects of the way that Morgan ’ s Canon has been employed and justifi ed by its proponents (e.g. Newbury, 1954; Griffi n, 1976; Costall, 1993; Wilder, 1996; Sober, 1998; Thomas, 1998; de Waal, 1999). In particular, commentators have noted that the Canon has often served as a convenient justifi cation for a priori resistance to attributions of mental states to animals, especially in the hands of behaviourists. Nonetheless most critical commentators have claimed that Morgan ’ s Canon is necessary for a rigorous animal psychology, arguing that we just need to be clearer about its justifi cation and that it should not be employed over zealously. To date the best discussion of Morgan ’ s Canon is Elliott Sober’ s (1998). Sober fi nds much that is wrong in the standard justifi cations that have been given for Morgan ’ s Canon, but nonetheless argues that it should be retained in a signifi cantly revised form. The present paper owes much to Sober ’ s, but I will argue that we should go considerably further than Sober: Morgan ’ s Canon should not be revised, but rather abandoned altogether (for discussion of Sober’ s views see fn. 10 and fn. 14 below). This rejectionist view is certainly not without precedents (e.g. Walker, 1983; Fodor, 1999), but a suffi ciently persuasive case for abandoning Morgan ’ s Canon has not yet been made. The principal aim of this paper is to correct this defi cit. © 2008 The Author Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2 2 6 S. Fitzpatrick A key component of my case for abandoning Morgan’ s Canon will be the claim that it is completely unnecessary for combating crude anthropomorphism in animal psychology, the key function that the Canon is taken to serve. I will show that there is an alternative and much more plausible principle to Morgan’ s Canon that captures all of the genuine methodological benefi ts that the Canon can bring, but suffers from none of its problems. Importantly, this principle places no special constraints on ‘ higher’ explanations of animal behaviour. Thus I will argue that animal psychologists have persistently over-interpreted the appropriate methodological lessons to be learnt from cases like Clever Hans. In so doing they have endorsed methodological principles that are unjustifi ed, pernicious and unnecessary . In short animal psychology ought to do away with Morgan ’ s Canon. 2. What is Morgan’ s Canon? Before we can begin to evaluate Morgan ’ s Canon, we fi rst need to be clear about what Morgan ’ s Canon actually says. One thing in particular that we need to be clear about is the distinction between ‘ higher ’ and ‘ lower ’ ‘ psychical faculties ’ . Morgan himself was vague about what he meant by these terms and about the nature of the ‘ psychological scale ’ . Subsequent theorists have done little to clarify these notions. Nonetheless, I think that we can identify what seems to be the dominant modern view of how ‘ higher ’ and ‘ lower ’ are to be interpreted in Morgan ’ s principle (see also Dewsbury, 1984 ).4 Modern theorists generally seem to take these terms to refer to the relative sophistication of the cognitive processes that are postulated by rival explanations for animal behaviour. A cognitive process is ‘ higher ’ on the psychological scale than another cognitive process if it is more sophisticated, and ‘ lower ’ on the scale if it ’ s less sophisticated. Likewise for explanations of animal behaviour: for example, an explanation that attributes second-order intentionality to an animal will be ‘ higher ’ than an explanation that attributes only fi rst-order intentionality, an explanation that attributes capacities for deliberation or practical reasoning will be ‘ higher’ than an explanation that attributes only conditioned responses or innate refl exes, and an explanation that attributes any sort of cognitive process will be considered ‘ higher ’ than an explanation that attributes no cognitive processes, and so on. Here in each case the ‘ higher’ explanation attributes cognitive processes to the animal that are generally regarded as more sophisticated than those attributed by the ‘ lower’ explanation. I take the relevant notion of ‘ sophistication ’ here to be broadly functional, so that a higher cognitive process is one that endows the animal with more elaborate cognitive capacities than does a lower process. That is why, for example, 4 I emphasise that my focus in this paper is on how Morgan’ s Canon is read by modern animal psychologists and not on how Morgan himself intended it to be read, for which see Costall, 1993; Radick, 2000 . © 2008 The Author Journal compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Doing Away with Morgan’ s Canon 2 2 7 second-order intentionality is a ‘ higher’ cognitive process than fi rst-order intentionality, since possession of second-order intentionality allows an organism to form mental states whose contents concern other mental states, while possession of fi rst-order intentionality does not.
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