What is the Lloyd Morgan canon, and how is it used in research?

This principle helps guide the creation of hypotheses when studying animal behavior.

For quite some time now, attempts have been made to explain the relationship between animal behavior and human thinking. That is, mental states have often been attributed to animals, both primates and others.

The problem with this is that, at times, too much has been inferred, seeing in every action of some animal species the result of complex mental processing.

The Lloyd Morgan canon is a principle that holds that, before giving complex mentalistic explanations of animal behavior, a simpler explanation is more likely to provide insight into their behavior. Let's understand it a little better below.

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What is the Lloyd Morgan Canon?

Also known as the law of parsimony in animal behavior and thought, Lloyd Morgan's Canon is a principle applied in animal research, especially in animal psychology.

This law states that an action performed by an animal need not be interpreted as if it were the result of the exercise of a higher psychic faculty if it can be interpreted as the result of a lower psychic activity.

The maxim is not to ascribe complex mental processes to animals at the slightest sign that human-like behavior is observed in them. Our behavior and that of other species may sometimes appear similar, but this does not mean that behind their behavior there is complex thinking, consciousness, planning or that they can infer what other individuals are thinking. The basic premise of Lloyd's canon was to always try to explain the behavior of other species using the simplest explanation.

The reason Lloyd Morgan made this statement has a lot to do with the scientific context in which he lived, specifically the late 19th and early 20th centuries. At that time Darwin's theory of Darwin's theory of evolution had become very popular, and there were many who wanted to see some hint of primitive human behavior in other species, especially in primates.especially in primates. A whole scientific current had emerged that attributed anthropomorphic behaviors to a wide repertoire of species, some phylogenetically quite distant from humans.

This is why Morgan wanted to be cautious and proposed this maxim. According to him, what the science of his time should do was to try to explain animal behavior with the least complex explanation possible, if any. Theories that are too complex and unproven end up being unwieldy, and far from expanding knowledge and research, they hinder it.

Morgan applies his idea in his book Habit and Instinct (1896), focusing on animal learning. Far from proposing mentalistic explanations as to why animals behave the way they do, he chooses to limit himself to explaining behavior that can be attributed to trial-and-error associations.. Morgan distinguishes between innate reactions, which we might well consider as instinctive, and reactions acquired through imitation as a source of experience acquisition.

Morgan himself considered that the psychological study of his time made use of two types of inductions. On the one hand, we have retrospective introspection, which is based on subjective data, while on the other hand, we have the more objective induction, based on the observation of external phenomena.

The science of his time was based on both methods, interpreting animal behavior in terms of the subjective experience of the researcher. Thus, if the observer attributes mental states to the observed animal, he may make the mistake of thinking that there is evidently thought..

The psychologist's version of Ockham's Razor

Lloyd Morgan's canon can be considered as a kind of psychologistic version of the famous Ockham's razor. This principle formulated in the 14th century by the famous English philosopher William of Okcham holds that entities should not be multiplied if it is not necessary. That is to say, if there are enough variables to explain a phenomenon, there is no need to include more than those variables..

If we have two scientific models that can explain the same natural event, applying the razor, the simpler one will be the one worthy of consideration.

Naturally, both Ockham's razor and Lloyd Morgan's canon are not exempt from criticism. The main one is that sometimes, when studying a complex phenomenon, it is impossible to select the simplest model that explains it without incurring in bad science, especially if the phenomenon cannot be approached empirically. That is, since the given simple explanation cannot be falsified, since there is no way to test it, claiming that this explanation has to be the most probable one is pseudoscientific behavior.

The other criticism is that simplicity does not necessarily have to correlate with plausibility. Einsein himself pointed out that it is not the simplicity of the explanation that makes it to be taken into greater consideration, but how explanatory it is for the phenomenon studied.. Moreover, to speak of "simple" models is somewhat ambiguous: is a model with only one variable but very complex a simple model? is a model with several variables but all of them easy to manipulate/check a complex model?

Scientific utility

As we mentioned, the study of animal behavior and, more recently, the cognition of human species has been increasing, and all kinds of mentalistic explanations have been proposed. This is why, in order to avoid giving overly anthropocentric explanations to the behavior of other species, running the risk of affirming that other living beings have self-consciousness or thoughts similar to ours, Lloyd Morgan's canon has been used as a basis for the study of animal behavior, Lloyd Morgan's canon has become a necessary requirement in research..

It must be understood that since psychology has been a science, there has always been an attempt to address whether other species can think like humans. This is not an issue without controversy and, in fact, if a consciousness similar to that of humans were demonstrated in animals for daily consumption, such as cows, pigs or chickens, it would lead to a great ethical debate, fueled especially by associations in defense of animal rights.

On many occasions, these same associations use supposed scientific studies to reaffirm their positions, which is legitimate. However, if research itself has attributed overly human mental traits to species that, unlike, for example, chimpanzees, do not have very sophisticated intelligence or self-awareness, without applying Morgan's canon or even relativizing his assertions, we can hardly speak of a scientific article.

The debate between mentalism and behaviorism, although it has been moderated in recent decades, has been a classic in the history of psychology. Behaviorism was a current that in its most radical version was nourished by Morgan's canon, dignifying psychology as a science. By focusing only on what was observable in the animal rather than attributing motives, thought or perceptions of any kind to it allowed psychology to cease to be as dispersed as it had been with psychoanalysis..

Today there is no doubt that considering mental processes in animals is not necessarily a bad thing, nor is it pseudoscientific. However, the problem, as we were saying, is to exaggerate the mental capacity of certain animals, attributing to them a psychological process that, most probably, they cannot have in their brains. There are many animal behaviors that may appear to be motivated, that there is complex thinking behind, but it may just be happenstance.

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Cases in animal behavior

On many occasions it has happened that mentalistic explanations have been put forward for phenomena that, viewed more critically, correspond to less sophisticated behavior. Below we will see two cases that, although they are not the only ones, explain quite well the idea of why one should resort to the simplest when studying animal behavior.

1. Penguin mating

Many species perform courtship and mating rituals. These behaviors are, in principle, intentional. As a rule, males strut in front of many females, inviting them to copulate with him. In the case of females, most species look for the male with the best characteristics and thus have strong and sexually attractive offspring when they reach maturity.

The king penguins of the Kerguelen Islands also have courtship rituals and in most cases mate for life. But, interestingly, some penguin pairs are homosexual. There are male penguins that court other males and mate, but naturally they will not produce offspring..

This phenomenon is not uncommon in this species and, for this reason, a sophisticated mentalistic explanation was attempted. These homosexual behaviors would occur when the penguin population has disparate sex ratios, such as having many more males than females. The male penguins, being aware of this, would try to balance the balance by sacrificing their reproduction and mating with other males.

However, this explanation ran into a small problem: penguins of this species do not seem to know in sex of their conspecifics.. In fact, these clumsy birds are all alike, making it difficult at first glance to tell whether there are more males or more females.

Applying Lloyd Morgan's canon, instead of assuming mental processes to these birds, such as the idea of majority and minority, what would happen in the homosexual pairing would be either that these penguins are really homosexual or a male has courted another male and this one has "played along".

2. Fighting between butterflies

Competition between animals, especially males, is a well-studied behavior.. The motives that push two individuals to fight are, fundamentally, defense of territory, search for possible mates, a female or food. In some species the fight changes depending on the motive behind it. Fighting for a female is not the same as fighting for territory or food, since in reproductive combats one tries to be as attractive and strong as possible.

Male butterflies also fight. In many species, two forms of supposedly sexual fighting have been found. One occurs in the air, with the two males fighting as they fly. The other occurs when there is a cocoon that is still immature but harbors a female.

While the second way of fighting seems to be a way of fighting for a female, the first does not have to be, and applying Lloyd Morgan's canon other research has posited a very interesting third option.

Although most butterflies exhibit sexual dimorphism, some species are unable to distinguish between females and males, some species are unable to distinguish between males and females.. It seems that sometimes a male butterfly encounters another male butterfly flying by, and as the sex drive pushes it to desperately search for a mate, it approaches and tries to copulate with it.

Seen from the outside, and the observer knowing that these are two male butterflies, one might think that they are actually fighting, but what might actually be happening is that they are copulating, or one is trying to force itself on the other. Also, physical fighting between males is often so gentle that it resembles copulation between males and females.

Bibliographical references:

• Heyes, C. M. (1998). Theory of mind in nonhuman primates. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 21(1): pp. 101 - 134.
• Premack, D. & Woodruff, G. (1978) Does the chimpanzee have a theory of mind? Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4: pp. 515 - 526.
• Dennett, D. C. (1983) Intentional systems in cognitive ethology: The "Panglossian paradigm" defended. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 6: pp. 343 - 390.