What is the Lloyd Morgan Canon, and How is it Used in Research?

For quite some time now, attempts have been made to explain how animal behavior relates to human thought. That is to say, there have been many times that mental states have been attributed to animals, both primates and others.

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

The Lloyd Morgan Canon It is a principle that maintains that, before giving complex mentalistic explanations of animal behavior, a simpler explanation will most likely allow us to understand their behavior. Let’s understand it a little better below.

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 that is applied in animal research, especially in animal psychology.

This law establishes that An action performed by an animal does not have to 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 lower psychic activity.

The maxim is not to attribute complex mental processes to animals even if human-like behavior is observed in them. Our behavior and that of other species may sometimes seem similar, but that does not mean that behind their behavior there is complex thinking, consciousness, planning or that they can infer what other individuals think. The basic premise of Lloyd’s canon was to always try to explain the behavior of other species using the simplest explanation.

The reason why Lloyd Morgan made this statement has a lot to do with the scientific context in which he lived, specifically the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. At that time the theory of Darwin’s evolution had become very popular, and there were many who wanted to see some glimpse of primitive human behavior in other species, especially in primates. An entire scientific trend 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 try to explain animal behavior with the least complex explanation possible, if there was one. Theories that are too complex and have not been demonstrated end up being difficult to handle, and far from expanding knowledge and research, they hinder them.

Morgan applies his idea in his book Habit and Instinct (1896), focusing on animal learning. Far from proposing mentalistic explanations about 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 makes a distinction between innate reactions, which we could well consider as instinctive, and reactions acquired through imitation as a source of acquiring experiences.

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, we have the more objective induction, based on the observation of external phenomena.

The science of his time started from both methods, interpreting animal behavior in terms of the subjective experience of the researcher. So that, If the observer attributes mental states to the observed animal, he may make the mistake of thinking that there is evidently thought

The psychological version of Ockham’s razor

Lloyd Morgan’s canon can be considered a kind of psychological version of Ockham’s famous razor. This principle formulated in the 14th century by the famous English philosopher William of Okcham maintains 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

If we have two scientific models that can explain the same natural event, applying the razor, the one that is the simplest 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 engaging in bad science, especially if the phenomenon cannot be addressed empirically. That is, since the simple explanation given cannot be falsified, since there is no way to verify it, stating that this explanation has to be the most probable is pseudoscientific behavior.

The other criticism is that simplicity does not necessarily have to correlate with plausibility. Einstein himself pointed out that It is not the simplicity of the explanation that means it should be taken into greater consideration, but rather how explanatory it is for the phenomenon studied Furthermore, talking about “simple” models is somewhat ambiguous. Is a model with a single but very complex variable a simple model? Is having 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 modernly, the cognition of human species has been increasing, proposing all types of mentalistic explanations. This is why, in order to avoid giving too anthropocentric explanations to the behavior of other species, running the risk of affirming that other living beings have self-awareness or thoughts similar to ours, Lloyd Morgan’s canon has become a necessary requirement in research

It must be understood that since psychology was a science, it has always tried to address whether other species can think like human beings. This is not a topic free of controversy and, in fact, if a human-like consciousness is demonstrated in animals for daily consumption, such as cows, pigs or chickens, it would entail 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, something that is legitimate. However, if the research itself has attributed mental traits that are too human to species that, unlike, for example, chimpanzees, do not have very sophisticated intelligence or self-awareness, without applying Morgan’s canon or relativizing its statements, it is very difficult We can talk about a scientific article.

The mentalism and behaviorism debate, although it has been moderate 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. Focusing only on what is observable about the animal instead of attributing motives, thoughts or perceptions of any kind. allowed psychology to stop being as dispersed as it had been with psychoanalysis

Nowadays there is no doubt that considering mental processes in animals is not necessarily bad nor pseudoscientific. However, the problem, as we said, is to exaggerate the mental capacity of certain animals, attributing to them a psychological process that, most likely, they cannot accommodate in their brain. There are many animal behaviors that may seem motivated, that there is complex thinking behind them, but it may simply be chance

Cases in animal behavior

On many occasions it has happened that mentalistic explanations have been proposed for phenomena that, seen 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 we should resort to the simplest when studying animal behavior.

1. Pairing in penguins

Many species carry out courtship and mating rituals. These behaviors, in principle, are intentional. As a general 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 he reaches maturity.

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

This phenomenon is not strange in this species and, for this reason, an attempt was made to provide a sophisticated mentalistic explanation. These homosexual behaviors would occur when the penguin population had unequal sex ratios, such as having many more males than females. Male penguins, being aware of this, would try to balance the scales 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 the sex of their conspecifics In fact, these clumsy birds are all the same, making it difficult at first glance to know if there are more males or more females.

Applying Lloyd Morgan’s canon, instead of assuming mental processes to these birds, as would be the idea of ​​majority and minority, what would happen in homosexual pairing would be either that these penguins really are homosexual or one male has courted another. male and he “has gone along with it.”

2. Fight between butterflies

Competition between animals, especially males, is a well-studied behavior The reasons 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 reason behind it. Fighting for a female is not the same as fighting for territory or food, since in combats with reproductive purposes one tries to be as attractive and strong as possible.

Male butterflies also fight. In many species, two ways of fighting with a supposed sexual purpose 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 that houses a female.

Although the second way of fighting seems to be a way of fighting for a female, the first does not have to be like that, and applying Lloyd Morgan’s canon, other research has raised a very interesting third option.

Although most butterflies are sexually dimorphic, some species are unable to distinguish between males and females It seems that sometimes a male butterfly encounters another male butterfly flying, and as the sexual impulse pushes it to desperately search for a mate, it approaches and attempts to copulate with it.

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