Bachelor of Philosophy Sample Thesis Prospectus

Less than two centuries ago, some natural philosophers speculated that all things had their ontological place on a “chain of being.” God occupied the position of greatest perfection; humans were farther down on the scale but still above all other mortal creatures. Although this imagery is supposed to carry little weight in the life sciences (the progeny, as it were, of natural philosophy), I will argue that it still finds veiled expression in a methodological principle used by comparative psychologists. I refer to the maxim put forth by Conwy Lloyd Morgan, which is known as Morgan’s Canon: “In no case may we interpret an action as the outcome of a higher psychical faculty, if it can be interpreted as the outcome of the exercise of one which stands lower in the psychological scale.” That is, when theorizing about animal behavior, once should not invoke higher mental processes if lower mental processes are sufficient to explain the observed facts.