Morgan’s Canon and the Associative-Cognitive Distinction Today: A Survey of Practitioners

Philosophers of science and mind have paid increasing attention to the field of comparative psychology. Two recurring points of discussion in the literature are the methodological value of Morgan's Canon and the distinction between associative and cognitive processes. Although the existing literature regularly makes claims about the beliefs and attitudes of comparative psychologists, there are few empirical studies verifying these claims. This paper fills this gap by presenting and analysing the views of over two hundred comparative psychologists on Morgan’s Canon and the associative-cognitive distinction. We found that while there is some agreement between the claims in the existing literature and the views of the practitioners surveyed here (e.g., that Morgan’s Canon is a parsimony principle), there are also surprising points of divergence (e.g., practitioners do not view the associative-cognitive distinction as a version of Morgan’s Canon). We intend for this study to inform existing philosophical and theoretical work on perennial questions regarding how to study animal minds and behaviour.