Abstract
AbstractFor over 100 years, Morgan's Canon has served as the criterion for distinguishing what appears to be complex cognitive processes shown by animals from simpler associative learning processes (Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning). Morgan's () canon states “In no case is an animal activity to be interpreted in terms of higher psychological processes if it can be fairly interpreted in terms of processes which stand lower in the scale of psychological evolution and development.” In the present article, several examples are provided in which complex human‐like processes are proposed to have been demonstrated but the judicious use of Morgan's Canon suggests that simpler mechanisms may be sufficient to account for the behavior. The use of Morgan's Canon is not meant to reduce behavior to its lowest common denominator but rather to challenge investigators to develop procedures that can distinguish between simple behavioral principles and the more complex processes that cannot be explained in terms of genetics or simple conditioning. Whatever the results of these experiments, they should help identify the underlying processes and mechanisms involved.
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