HOW MORGAN,LLOYD CANON BACKFIRED

Lloyd Morgan's Canon is usually represented as a brave step towards me chanistic behaviourism. Morgan himself, however, was convinced that th e behaviour of animals and humans could only be treated in intentional ist terms. In fact, not only the spirit but the details of his Canon h ave been consistently misunderstood. It was turned around by Neo-Carte sians within psychology and evolutionary biology to attack the very gr ound that Morgan shared with Darwin-the-assumption that organisms are ''no mere puppets in the hand of circumstances.'' Morgan did not formu late his Canon in 'revolt'' against Romanes's anthropomorphic approach to comparative psychology. An examination of Morgan's early views rev eals that his Canon represented a move towards, not against, Romanes's idea of an animal psychology. Before the Canon, Morgan had denied the very possibility of a comparative psychology.