Lloyd Morgan

This paper considers the claim that C. G. Jung used a Lamarckian model of evolution to underwrite his theory of archetypes. This claim is challenged on the basis of Jung’s familiarity with and use of the writings of James Mark Baldwin and Conway Lloyd Morgan, both of whom were noted and forceful opponents of neo-Lamarckian theory

Hogenson’s central argument is that Jung’s engagement with Conway Lloyd Morgan — a forceful neo-Darwinian opponent of Lamarckism — undermines the standard charge that Jung’s archetypes rest on Lamarckian foundations.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001thesis

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Baldwin and Morgan were committed neo-Darwinians, as psychologists they were also concerned with the relationship of mind to the process of evolution. Baldwin and Morgan took seriously Romanes’ questions regarding the influence of learning and habit on the inheritability of behaviour.

This passage establishes Lloyd Morgan’s dual identity as both a rigorous neo-Darwinian and a psychologist who treated the role of mind in evolution as a serious theoretical problem, directly relevant to Jung’s concerns.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001thesis

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he was familiar with the work of both Baldwin and Morgan, and this familiarity appears to have helped form the basis for what he does have to say about evolution… Morgan is cited in both ‘Instinct and the Unconscious’ and ‘On the Nature of the Psyche’.

Hogenson documents that Jung’s familiarity with Lloyd Morgan was not incidental but formative, as evidenced by explicit citations in two of Jung’s major theoretical essays on instinct and psychic structure.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001thesis

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As Lloyd Morgan aptly remarks, it would be as uninteresting to bet on an instinctive reaction as on the rising of the sun tomorrow.

Jung invokes Lloyd Morgan’s authority directly to define instinct by its absolute regularity and predictability, using this criterion to distinguish genuine instinctive processes from compulsive or phobic phenomena.

Jung, Carl Gustav, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, 1960thesis

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it was precisely this conjunction that would have been underwritten by his reading of Lloyd Morgan and Baldwin. Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory has, of course, become an issue of central concern in contemporary psychology and psychiatry

Hogenson argues that Jung’s willingness to conjoin psychological and material dimensions of evolution was positively shaped by his reading of Lloyd Morgan and Baldwin, not despite but through their neo-Darwinian commitments.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001supporting

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Jung remarks near the end of ‘Instinct and the Unconscious’, ‘Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and wherever we meet with uniform and regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype’

This passage contextualizes Jung’s Morganian criterion of regularity — the hallmark of instinct per Lloyd Morgan — as the precise logical foundation for his definition of the archetype as a recurring mode of apprehension.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001supporting

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this paper may be read as an introduction to a Baldwinian understanding of Jung that seeks to make use of his familiarity with Baldwin and Lloyd Morgan as a point of departure for further developments in theory and practice.

Hogenson concludes by proposing that Lloyd Morgan’s work, alongside Baldwin’s, can serve as a productive launching point for contemporary Jungian theory seeking evolutionary legitimacy beyond Lamarckism.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001supporting

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Stevens argues, one can interpret Jung’s ideas about the collective unconscious and the archetypes in terms derived from later developments in evolutionary theory and comparative psychology, to make sense out of Jung in more contemporary terms.

This passage frames the interpretive problem that Lloyd Morgan’s presence in Jung’s reading helps resolve: how to ground Jungian theory in post-Lamarckian evolutionary thinking without abandoning its core claims.

Hogenson, George, The Baldwin Effect: A Neglected Influence on C. G. Jungs Evolutionary Thinking, 2001supporting

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Darwin went so far as to proclaim that worms ‘deserve to be called intelligent, for they … act in nearly the same manner as a man under similar circumstances.’ He often argued for such human qualities in animals, commonly characterizing their expressive behaviors with terms like ‘affection’

This passage situates the broader intellectual climate of anthropomorphic attribution in animal psychology against which Morgan’s Canon — not explicitly named here — was a corrective reaction, making it contextually relevant to Lloyd Morgan’s significance.

LeDoux, Joseph, Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety, 2015aside

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