Editing Animal cognition (section)

===Morgan's Canon===
{{main|Morgan's Canon}}
Coined by 19th-century British psychologist [[C. Lloyd Morgan]], Morgan's Canon remains a fundamental precept of [[comparative psychology|comparative (animal) psychology]]. In its developed form, it states that:<ref>{{cite book| vauthors = Morgan CL |year=1903|title=An Introduction to Comparative Psychology|url=https://archive.org/details/introductiontoco00morguoft|edition=2|publisher=W. Scott, London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/introductiontoco00morguoft/page/59 59]}}</ref>
<blockquote>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.</blockquote>

In other words, Morgan believed that [[Anthropomorphism|anthropomorphic]] approaches to animal behavior were fallacious, and that people should only consider behaviour as, for example, rational, purposive or affectionate, if there is no other explanation in terms of the behaviours of more primitive life-forms to which we do not attribute those faculties.