Conwy Lloyd Morgan

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C. Lloyd Morgan. (1898)

Conwy Lloyd Morgan (born February 6, 1852 in London , † March 6, 1936 in Hastings ) was a British zoologist and psychologist and is considered the founder of experimental animal psychology and ethology . He is now in particular for his as Morgan's canon ( Morgan's Canon known designated) theorem.

Life

After studying at the Royal College of Science in London with Thomas Huxley , he went to South Africa from 1878 to 1884 to teach at a college in Rondebosch . In 1884 he received a professorship for zoology and geology at University College in Bristol , from 1911 to 1919 he was professor of psychology and ethics at this university . One of his students was Reginald Innes Pocock .

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Comparative Psychology and Ethology

Morgan is one of the founding fathers of comparative psychology and ethology alongside George Romanes . Like Romanes, Morgan was also looking for a method of being able to make reliable statements about the mental faculties of animals and thus to stand out from mere lay descriptions. From Morgan's point of view, however, Romanes remained in the unscientific writing of natural history and the collection of often anthropomorphic representations and anecdotes. Morgan himself sought an empirical study of intellectual faculties with reliable results. In his work he dealt in particular with the problem of the alien psyche , i.e. the problem that we are unable to have direct access to the intellectual faculties of others. In order to be able to capture this nonetheless, he tried to combine experimental research into animals with an inductive method based on human psychology . The starting point of the research was thus the observable behavior of animals, from which conclusions should be drawn about their mental faculties. An all too rapid and unsecured attribution of human characteristics in animals posed a danger. His famous canon is an expression of this awareness of the problem.

Morgan's Canon

With his canon, Morgan called for general caution not to make any hasty anthropomorphic and thus scientifically unsecured ascriptions of human characteristics in animals. The canon can be found for the first time in his work An Introduction to Comparative Psychology , published in 1894 . The following passage is usually used as Morgan's canon, although there are different phrasing variations in his work:

"In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of the exercise of a higher mental faculty, if it can be interpreted as the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale. (German: In no case should we interpret an action as the result of exercising a higher mental faculty, even if it can also be interpreted as the result of a mental faculty that is lower on the spiritual scale.) "

Following the canon, when interpreting animal behavior, it must be checked whether it can also be explained with reference to lower mental faculties. Looking at the observations of his dog, who was able to open the garden door, Morgan emphasizes, for example, that the dog's behavior (higher intellectual ability), which at first glance appears to be insightful, can also be considered trial-and-error learning after a long study ( lower mental faculties) can be explained.

Emergence

Together with the English philosopher Samuel Alexander Morgan brought the theory of emergent development ( emergent evolution out), after the awareness an evolutionary phenomenon is that organic will not let themselves sufficiently explain. Because on the one hand evolution is a series of continuous increases that remain secured by the results ( resultant ). On the other hand completely new laws and development rows by the emergence (arising in the evolution emergent Namely induced) through which ascending.

reception

Morgan's Canon

To this day, Morgan's canon is considered the most frequently quoted sentence in the history of animal psychology. Usually it is understood as a principle of economy or simplicity or understood as a variant of Occam's razor , applied to comparative psychology. However, there are also views that regard these interpretations as a whole as misinterpretations and emphasize that Morgan himself explicitly opposed such interpretations in his texts.

According to the canon, animal behavior should not be explained with a higher mental faculty, even if it can be explained with a lower one. However, there is widespread disagreement about what can be understood by higher and lower mental faculties. Too strict an interpretation of the canon demands that when interpreting animal behavior, intellectual faculties should be completely dispensed with in favor of a stimulus-response model . This culminated in radical behaviorism in the 1950s .

A frequently expressed criticism relates to the scale addressed by Morgan: Morgan neither provides a psychological scale according to which processes can be classified as higher or lower, nor is such a scale meaningful to justify. Even a later formulation by Morgan that aims at evolutionary developments for the formation of such a scale is not helpful in this regard, since evolutionary development is not linear. On the other hand, there are efforts to adhere to the canon and to revise it taking into account the scientific developments within comparative behavioral research. A criticism of this debate, however, emphasizes that most authors completely ignore the context of Morgan's research program and only discuss a single sentence taken out of context.

Emergentism

Morgan's emergentism influenced Thorstein Veblen's theory of socio-economic development.

Works

  • Animal Life and Intelligence . 1890.
  • An Introduction to Comparative Psychology . 1894.
  • Emergent evolution . Williams & Norgate , London 1923.
  • Autobiography of C. Lloyd Morgan . In: CA Murchison (Ed.): A History of Psychology in Autobiography . Volume II. Clark University Press, Worcester 1932, pp. 237-264.
  • The Emergence of Novelity . 1933.
  • The Law of Psychogenesis . Mind (NS) 1 (1892), 72 - 93

literature

  • Martin Böhnert, Christopher Hilbert: C. Lloyd Morgan's Canon - About the founding father of comparative psychology and the importance of epistemic concerns . In: Martin Böhnert, Kristian Köchy , Matthias Wunsch (eds.): Philosophy of Animal Research: Methods and Programs . Alber Verlag, Freiburg 2016, ISBN 978-3495487419 , pp. 149-183.
  • Elliot Sober: Morgan's Canon . In: Collin Allen, Denise Cummins (Eds.): The Evolution of Mind . Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 1998, ISBN 978-0195110531 , pp. 224-242.
  • Tobias Starzak: Cognition in Humans and Animals: A Comparative Philosophical Perspective. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3110368901 , pp. 12–32.
  • Roger K. Thomas: Lloyd Morgan's Canon: A History of Its Misrepresentation . University of Georgia 2001, accessed July 15, 2016.

Web links

Commons : Conwy Lloyd Morgan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William H. Thorpe: The Origins and Rise of Ethology. The science of the natural behavior of animals . Greenwood, London 1979, ISBN 978-0275904319 , p. 25.
  2. ^ C. Lloyd Morgan: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology . W. Scott, London 1894, p. 53.
  3. ↑ Georgi Schischkoff (Ed.): Philosophical dictionary . Kröner, Stuttgart 1991, Lemma Morgan.
  4. ^ Donald Dewsbury: Comparative Psychology in the twentieth Century . Hutchinson Ross, Stroudsburg 1984, ISBN 978-0879331085 , p. 187.
  5. ^ Roger K. Thomas: Lloyd Morgan's Canon: A History of Its Misrepresentation . University of Georgia 2001, accessed July 15, 2016.
  6. ↑ Marc Bekoff, Collin Allen: Cognitive Ethology: Slayers, Skeptics, and Proponents . In: Robert W. Mitchell, Nicholas S. Thompson, H. Lynn Miles (Eds.): Anthropomorphism, Anecdotes and Animals . State University of New York Press, New York 1997, ISBN 978-0791431269 , pp. 313-334, here p. 326.
  7. ↑ Tobias Starzak: Cognition in humans and animals: A comparative philosophical perspective. De Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3110368901 , pp. 12–32.
  8. ^ Elliot Sober: Morgan's Canon . In: Collin Allen, Denise Cummins (Eds.): The Evolution of Mind . Oxford University Press, New York / Oxford 1998, ISBN 978-0195110531 , pp. 224-242.
  9. ↑ Martin Böhnert, Christopher Hilbert: C. Lloyd Morgan's Canon - About the founding father of comparative psychology and the importance of epistemic concerns . In: Martin Böhnert, Kristian Köchy, Matthias Wunsch (eds.): Philosophy of Animal Research: Methods and Programs . Alber Verlag, Freiburg 2016, ISBN 978-3495487419 , pp. 149-183.
  10. ↑ Geoffrey M. Hodgson: On the evolution of Thorstein Veblen's evolutionary economics (PDF; 1.2 MB) Cambridge Political Economy Society 1998, Vol. 22, pp. 420f
personal data
SURNAME Morgan, Conwy Lloyd
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British zoologist and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1936
Place of death Hastings