Journal f o r the Theory of Social Behaviour 2 I :2

0021-8308 $2.50

The Development of Moral Reasoning and the Foundations of Geometry

JOHN MACNAMARA

I . INTRODUCTION

How do children come to understand the words “good” and “evil”, or their equivalents in other languages, as applied to actions in moral evaluation? Compare these words with “hot” and “cold”. One difference is that “hot” and “cold” are related in a fairly direct way to perceptual experience, whereas “good” and “evil” are not. Good actions have in common no perceptual property. They do not, for example, reliably give rise to a pleasant experience. We assure children that the action of removing a thorn is a good one, even if it gives intense pain. We warn them that the path ofvirtue involves suffering and sacrifice. How then do they catch on to the meaning of moral discourse? Our problem is a special case of a more general one: how does one gain entry to a system of interrelated terms and ideas? Sometimes one does so by learning a system ofdefinitions couched in already familiar terms. If, however, the terms to be learned are primitive in the system, as are the key terms of moral discourse, and if they cannot be defined in the terms of some other system, the problem of entry is especially acute. Concretely, the set of actions that are good are not distinguished from other actions by distinctive perceptual features - it is only in cowboy movies that the good man wears a red shirt and the bad man a black one, as Thurber once observed. Besides the set ofgood actions cannot be defined in the terms of some non moral area of discourse - see Moore ( I 903, chap I ). How, then, can children catch on and take effective part in discussions of morality?

I believe that if we pursue this question seriously it will lead us to a deep understanding of the psychology of morality. Doing so is not part of what is called “ordinary language analysis”, which is the attempt to resolve

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philosophical problems by studying the meanings of certain expressions in their variable everyday uses. T o explain how people come to grasp moral expressions is rather to specify the prerequisites, in terms both of endowment and experience, for entering with some level of success into moral discourse.

Psychoanalysis had an answer to our question. I t attributed the origin of consciousness of right and wrong to the psychological identification of a child with its parents; so that “good”, a t root, means what parents say to do and “evil” what they say to avoid - see Freud (1947). The trouble with this approach is that it makes “good” equivalent to “what one’s parents say”. But that cannot be right because it always makes sense to ask: Was what my parents told me to do morally good? It can never make sense to ask: Was what my parents told me to do what my parents told me to do? It follows that “good” is not equivalent to parental authority backing up instructions. Incidentally, by an exactly parallel argument it can be shown that “good” is not equivalent to what God said to do. Authority isjust not an adequate foundation for morality. We must be suspicious of Freud’s account of the development of conscience, or “superego” as he called it, and of any account of grasping the meaning of moral terms that might be grounded in it. Authority, even with the whole panoply of rewards and punishment, is not sufficiently central to morality to contribute substantially to people’s understanding of moral discourse. Of course parents may employ rewards and punishments to direct attention to the moral dimension of actions and to instill habits of virtue. It remains, however, that rewards and punishments are not part of the meaning of moral terms.

Piaget’s (1932) account of the development of moral reasoning looks at first sight like Freud’s but manages to escape the critique to which Freud succumbed by disengaging adult moral judgement from its origins in childhood. Piaget situates the origin ofmoral judgement in “the ethics ofauthority, which is that ofduty and obedience” (p. 324). This is later replaced by “the ethics ofmutual respect, which is that ofgood (as opposed to duty), and ofautonomy” (p. 324). The move raises several questions, only one of which need detain us. Why should we believe that a stage of development where children feel they should submit blindly to authority has anything to d o with a stage where they have established for themselves principles of mutual respect? It is not enough to say that the one precedes the other. Children grow their first tooth before they utter their first word. Yet no one supposes that growing the first tooth is a stage in language development. At the very least we need an argument to show that the authority stage is a necessary precursor to the mutual respect stage. Piaget does not have such an argument, and the reason one does not notice is he applies the word “ethics” to both stages.

Scepticism about a radically different early stage once entertained is not readily dismissed. Piaget does not set age limits to the ethics of authority. Still, many of the protocols that he assigns to this stage are from children aged six or seven. His more systematic follower Lawrence Kohlberg ( 1964, p. 403) presents

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evidence that this type of moral reasoning predominates until age ten. Note what is being claimed: at this stage the very essence ofa good action is that it has the approval of authority; the very essence of a bad one is that it has its disapproval. I t ought to follow that a t this stage children are incapable of distinguishing between authority and morality. But this is obviously wrong. Consider the fairytales and nursery stories in which there are wicked authority figures. Take “Cinderella”. The authority who exacts obedience from Cinderella is the wicked stepmother. The story does not question her right to expect obedience; what is at issue is her unfair treatment of Cinderella. The story makes an implicit distinction between authority and justice. IfPiaget were right most children should not be able to understand the story until they are over seven; by Kohlberg’s findings, over ten. But this is just nonsense. Witness the loud reactions ofmuch younger children to what they perceive as a parent’s favouritism towards a sibling. The only possible conclusion is that Piaget and Kohlberg gravely underestimate the moral sensibilities of young children and their grasp of moral terms - for experimental findings in agreement with this conclusion see Turiel (1983, chap. 7 ) , Dunn (1988) and Darley and Shultz

There is something deeply the matter with Piaget’s theory, something not too remote from what is wrong with Freud’s. But Piaget’s theory, in the writing and methods of Lawrence Kohlberg, his coworkers and numerous followers, is enormously influential in psychology. Kohlberg’s (and Piaget’s) work is also the centrepiece ofattention in writing and lecturing about the moral education and pastoral care of young people. So for reasons that extend far beyond the interests of theoretical psychologists it is important to evaluate it thoroughly. The main trouble is an inadequate estimate ofthe psychological resources that a child needs to begin to catch on to moral discourse.

Although Kohlberg based himself on Piaget’s work, he presents a theory of moral development that is more highly articulated and far better supported empirically than Piaget’s. Where Piaget had two broad stages, Kohlberg has six. Kohlberg also presents a more complete statement of the mature stages of moral reasoning. And his writings have given rise to a large body of empirical data. It seems more appropriate, then, that 1 should devote my attention to Kohlberg.

Kohlberg has had other critics over the years frequently developing lines of thought related to some I will be taking, - see, for example, the essays in Modgil and Modgil ( I 986). Some of the critics have attacked the adequacy of Kohlberg’s research methods and his technique for coding subjects’ responses - see Kurtines and Greif ( I 974), Sullivan ( I 977), Gilligan ( 1982). He has also had able defenders in these matters - see Broughton ( I 978) and Rest ( I 986). I will avoid the more technical aspects of the discussion and focus attention on theory.

(1990).

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My aim, however, is not so much to criticize Kohlberg but to highlight problems related to a stage theory ofdevelopment and especially to the learning of a set of primitive expressions. I also hope to adumbrate, at least, a rather different theory of the development of moral reasoning. My strategy is the circuitous one of taking a look at the development of children’s understanding of space. There are several reasons. One is to lend a sense of perspective. Another is to gain illumination by examining one of the most deeply explored concepts in the history of thought. I do not suggest that ethics is amenable to axiomatization and formalization in the way that geometry is. Rather, geometry is an area where intuitions are very sharp. I hope to benefit from such clarity when I return to the more obscure intuitions ofmorality. Besides the two areas have much in common. In particular, the issue of introducing a set of primitive geometrical expressions has been deeply pondered by mathe- maticians and we can gain much from looking at their solution of the problem. I hope that the excursus into geometry will prove its worth as we go along.

2. GEOMETRY

At the very beginning of his Foundations of geometry David Hilbert (18991 1902) claims that he is carrying out “the logical analysis of our intuition of space” (p. I ) . The intuition of space, then, is presupposed. What might this preanalytic, common intuition ofspace be? Certain senses place us in contact with the spatial properties of objects, notably vision, touch, hearing and the proprioceptive sense that tells us when we are moving in space. By means of these senses we become aware of the shapes of objects, their locations and their distances from one another. These spatial properties, however, are of an extremely conceptual nature. For example, I see the distance from building A to building B; I also walk from A to B. Yet a single notion is applied in connection with the radically different senses ofvision and motion, that ofthedistance from A to B. The distance I see is the distance I walk. To make the matter more dramatic, I may also see the distance from B to C, walk that distance too and then decide that the distance from B to C is the same as that from A to B. Such a notion ofdistance, and it is quite ordinary, is a very conceptual one indeed.

The same applies to position. It is conceptualized as distance from fixed objects, such as the corners ofa room; and the same position can be occupied by quite different objects. Pure position, that is unoccupied space, is not perceptible. Equally conceptual is the three dimensional shape of an opaque object. One cannot see its back while viewing it from the front. The idea of a continuous visible surface is a construct.

One might go on giving examples of how remote from sensory data are the most common notions in the ordinary intuitions ofspace. But turn instead to the question ofwhere such notions come from. They cannot come in any direct way

The Development of Moral Reasoning I ‘ 9

from vision, touch, audition or the sensation of movement. I t follows that they must be supplied by the mind -- granted suitable experience. These abstract notions play their part in everyday reasoning about space. Imagine two children talking about how to get an object down from a shelf. It would be quite usual for one to say: “You can’t reach it because I can’t; and I’m taller than

Apart from the basic abstract notions, there are what Hilbert calls “ideal elements” in the pretheoretical intuition of space. These are elements that complete a more basic conceptualization. Take the notion of a point. We have all made dots with crayons, pens and pencils. A pencil makes a smaller dot than a crayon. A sharp pencil makes a smaller dot than a blunt one; sharpen the sharp pencil and it makes a still smaller dot. One can conceive of a point in physical space as the limit of this process - something so small that i t cannot be made any smaller. Such a dot is ofcourse invisible, even with a microscope, so the notion of it does not come from vision. It is a conceptual element that is introduced to complete a certain series of commonsense notions. Another ideal element is that of the absolute neutrality of space with respect to the spatial dimensions of the objects that occupy it. This property is called the “isotropy” of space. (Remember we are discussing ordinary intuition and not advanced physics.) T o see what this is, imagine seeing a building from a distance of two miles. It looks small. From close up i t looks large. Yet we do not believe that the change in appearance is because it grew or because we shrank. It is a presupposition ofour common intuition ofspace that on its own space exercises no force at all on objects and their shapes. Obviously we cannot perceive the absence of all force. Isotropy is an ideal element that the mind supplies. Other such elements are the absolute straightness oflines, the absolute smoothness and flatness of surfaces, and the absolute continuity of lines and surfaces.

These remarks lead inevitably to the conclusion that the every day conceptualization ofspace, though occasioned by perceptual experiences, is not explained by them. It can be explained only be positing in the mind extensive resources to conceptualize and idealize. This does not mean that the intuition of space in its entirety is ready to go in the neonate mind. Perhaps it must wait upon considerable neurological development. I t does mean that the intuition depends in large part on unlearned mental resources. Probably these comprise what I have been calling “abstract concepts” together with procedure-like devices to apply them appropriately. The ideal elements probably come later, but the ability to carry things to the limit and, where necessary, posit a new type ofentity goes beyond anything that is warranted by the operation ofthe senses.

Hilbert sees his task as making fully explicit and formal the logical structure of the intuition of space. Remember, he is not analysing the nature of physical space but of our intuition of it. He uses the logical structure of our intuition to specify a mathematical, nonphysical domain for Euclidean geometry. He does so by specifying primitive expressions - such as “point”, “straight line” and

you.’’

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“between” - and by supplying a set of axioms. It is a condition on the adequacy of his axioms that they be mutually independent and consistent and that they be complete in the sense that every truth ofEuclidean geometry can be derived from them by logic. All of this, of course, goes far beyond the common conceptualization of space.

Two points in Hilbert’s work deserve our attention. The first is a limited meaning holism. Unlike Euclid he does not attempt to define the primitive expressions independent of the system to which they belong. This disturbed Frege, who entered into a correspondence with him on the matter. Frege felt that the precise meaning ofany term in an axiom had to be “already completely laid down” (1980, p. 36) independent ofthe axioms. Hilbert in his reply insisted that the axioms were the only means for defining the primitive expressions. Using “point” as an example he says

the definition of the concept point is not complete until the structure of the system of axioms is complete. For every axiom contributes something to the definition, and hence every new axiom changes the concept. A point in Euclidean, non-Euclidean, Archimedean and non-Archimedean geometry is something different in each case.” (In Frege, 1980, p. 42).

A better known example, since the popularization of relativity, is that the meaning of “straight line” changes from Euclidean to Riemannian geometry. It should be noted, however, that Hilbert’s meaning holism is of a very restricted nature. Dummett (1978) and Stich (1983) advocate an unrestricted meaning holism in which the meaning of every expression in a language depends on the meanings of all the others. Hilbert has the meanings of the geometrical expressions depend only on the system of geometrical axioms. He does not, for example, define “point” as the limit of making dots smaller and smaller in the way we suggested above. To do so would be to introduce into geometry a physical element that is foreign to it - see Hallett (1989).

While Hilbert is speaking about mathematical objects, his position requires that the words “point”, “straight line” and “plane” as applied in the common intuition ofspace should also be supported by a suitable set ofspatial principles or axioms. It follows that the meanings ofsuch words are not fixed independent of the conceptualization ofspace as a whole. Their meanings are not, as it were, thrust on us one at a time by perception. Instead, they are imposed upon the perceptual array by the mind and they derive their status from their place in the conceptualization as a whole. This is very much in the spirit of the Gestalt psychologists for whom the interpretation of the visual part was determined by the interpretation of the whole. Moreover, the commonsense meanings of “point”, “straight line” and “plane” are grasped only be someone who can apply the supporting set of principles or axioms as a whole. Without the entire set one could have only a distorted adumbration of their commonsense

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘3’ meanings. For an excellent discussion of Hilbert’s ideas on the axiomatic method in geometry see Hallett (1989).

The second point is that any system is open to extension by the addition of new ideal elements. As examples of such elements in relation to the natural numbers Hilbert mentions zero and the negative numbers. With the addition of these subtraction, which previously was a partial function (there being no value for 7 minus g) , becomes a total function. In the common conception of space several ideal elements are already present explicitly; for example, the ideal of a smooth surface. Children have to learn that a polished mahogany table top is not perfectly smooth in the geometrical sense. There are also implicit ideal elements in the common conception. One such is the supposition that space is continuous, that there are no gaps in it. The job of the mathematician is partly to make explicit the ideal elements that are implicit in the common conception. The mathematician also adds new ideal elements: arealess points; lines with no width; infinite extension in all directions; extra dimensions (beyond the three dimensions of the common conception). Thus while the common conceptualization ofspace contains certain ideal elements, the mathematician’s contains more. The introduction of ideal elements, so essential in mathematics, merely continues a process that exists in all conceptual systems. Idealization is as natural to the mind as breathing to the body.

With these notions from geometry we turn back to moral reasoning.

3. MORAL REASONING - KOHLBERG

Broadly, Kohlberg’s theory of the development of moral reasoning in the area of justice consists of two parts, a theoretical statement of the final stage and an empirical account of progress towards it. Progress is not by means of physiological development or maturation but by cognitive means employed in the resolution of “cognitive conflict.” One therefore expects to find in the early stages a foundation from which cognitive development in moral reasoning is possible, similar to that suggested for the development of geometry.

Kohlberg’s method is to pose moral puzzles to people at different ages, ask them to say how the principal protagonist ought to act, and then ask for their reasons for deciding as they do. Attention is mainly on the system of reasons given. One of the best known puzzles is that which confronts a man whose wife’s life can be saved only by a medicine that he cannot afford. What is he to do, and why?

We would not adopt a similar strategy to explore children’s intuition ofspace. We would not, for example, ask them, Is the distance you see between A and B the same as the distance you walk from A to B and why? We would not ask, How do you know that as you carry a ruler from one place to another its length and shape do not change? Or, How do you know that there is space all the way

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between you and that tree? The reason is that such questions miss the spontaneous and intuitive nature of people’s grasp of space. Besides they would almost certainly elicit such answers from young children as, “My Daddy told me.” Which is not at all the source of children’s intuitions of space. Things are actually the other way round. Children can understand their parents’ remarks about space only if they already have an appropriate intuition ofspace. Besides, the questioning would not get at the practical grasp of space exhibited in children’s everyday manipulation of objects in it.

This being so, why should anyone proceed otherwise in investigating children’s grasp of morality? To say the least, Kohlberg’s method needs justification.

3. I Kohlberg’s stage one

Here, so far as I know, is the last description ofstage one that Kohlberg offered before he died.

. . . the moral significance ofan action, its goodness or badness, is seen as a real, inherent, and unchanging quality of an act, just as color and mass are seen as inherent qualities of objects.. , Punishment is seen as important in that it is identified with a bad action rather than because the actor is attempting. . . to avoid negative consequences to himselfor herself. . . Morality at Stage I is heteronomous in the Piagetian sense; that is, what makes something wrong is defined by the authority rather than by cooperation among equals. (Kohlberg, 1986, p. 491).

While this is just a summary, it does contain Kohlberg’s distillation of what young children said in response to his puzzles. Notice that i t reveals enormously abstract thought, making reference, implicit or explicit, to actions and parental authority. Actions are events that have a true explanation in the agent’s beliefs and desires. Actions are frequently instantiated in behaviour. You can perceive behaviour; you cannot perceive the behaviour’s intentional dimension, its responsiveness to beliefs and desires. Neither can you perceive authority. You can perceive your parents and their utterances. You cannot directly perceive the meaning of their utterances nor their authority to direct you.

Notice, too, that Kohlberg seems to be defining the meaning of “wrong” for stage one by means ofprinciples. He says that “what makes something wrong is deJined by the authority.” The main principle would seem to be that might is right. Indeed, Kohlberg insists that each stage is a “structural whole” representing an “underlying thought organization” - see Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer ( 1983, p. 3 I ) . This seems superficially to be in the style of Hilbert’s axiomatic approach.

For all that, Kohlberg’s stage one is not a basis for moral reasoning. He makes supporting authority constitutive of what it is to be right and opposing

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘33 authority constitutive of what is to be wrong. But, as we have seen, to take “right” and “wrong” in this way is just not an adequate basis from which to enter moral discussion. Moreover, parents may well be a usually reliable source ofsound moral judgement, but that is another matter. Parents are also a source ofsound geometrical judgement. They may say that the distance from home to school is only halfthat from home to Aunt Sally’s. And ifchildren are asked how they know that fact they are liable to say that their parents told them so. This would not lead us to say that children thought that parental say so was constitutive of distance. So why, in similar circumstances, should we say that children think parental say so is constitutive of moral rightness and wrongness? It seems an utterly unwarranted conclusion.

The similarity with Hilbert is merely superficial. The reason is that in mature moral reasoning the principle “might is right” does not appear at all. Remember, too, that implicit in Hilbert’s analysis of spatial intuition was the belief that the intuition was grounded in a set of spatial principles complete enough to yield the common concept of physical space - a concept that is very close to Euclidean space. Analysis revealed a complex set of axioms which were in their turn complete. Other geometries, which historically come later than Euclidean geometry, are formed by dropping one or more of the Euclidean axioms. So on two counts Kohlberg’s approach is radically different from Hilbert’s: Kohlberg’s stage-one principles are not complete and the principles specified have to be replaced in the course of development.

Returning to a more concrete level we observe that part ofwhat parents say to children is that a certain action is bad or wicked. Kohlberg believes that stage-one children (possibly up to age ten) are inczpable of distinguishing between this and prohibition. Now parents may tell children to stop making noise because they are tired ofit. They are not saying that the sounds ofchildren playing are morally evil; just that they want some peace and quiet. Of course disobedience in a child is morally wrong; but then it is the disobedience, not the noise, that is wrong. Children appreciate this very well and show they do by playing noisily and happily in the presence of their parents on other occasions. So when children say that something is wrong because parents have forbidden it they may well be saying that disobedience on their part would be morally wrong. We have already seen, in discussing Piaget, that children by their understanding of stories and by their reactions to unfairness show a far subtler sensibility to moral issues than Kohlberg (or Piaget) suggests. Moreover, there are several studies showing that children as young as three or four years of age distinguish the morally prohibited on the one hand from on the other the conventionally prohibited (picking up peas with one’s fingers) and the prohibition that is motivated by physical danger - see Weston and Turiel ( I 980)~ Smetana ( I 98 I ), Turiel ( I 982), Dunn and Munn ( I 987) and Edwards (1987).

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How can children understand the difference between permission (prohibition) and moral approval (disapproval)? In other words how do they catch on to the precisely moral aspects of moral discourse? In his description of stage one Kohlberg supplies children with no hold with which to pry apart the different predicates that apply to actions and none with which to fix the meaning of the moral ones. A word of clarification at this juncture. A person knows the meaning of a predicate like “good” when they know the objects to which it applies (actions) and the attribute of such objects that it designates. Notice that the meaning is taken to be an objective function of the word (in an appropriate context) and we are talking about a user’s grasp of that meaning. It is not necessary for successful use that the user be able to discern all and only those objects that have the attribute. It is not required of competent users of “good” that they be able to tell which actions are good; any more than i t is required of competent users of “kilometer” that they be able to tell which distances are a kilometer long. The peculiar interest of “good” as opposed to many other predicates is that it does not denote a perceptible attribute of actions; neither, being a primitive of moral discourse, is i t definable. I t follows that special care is needed to specify a footing from which children can grasp its meaning. Unfortunately, Kohlberg places children at the outset in a muddle from the moral point of view and specifies no means by which they can extract themselves from it. Indeed he denies that there are any unlearned principles of moral reasoning - Kohlberg (1984, p. 2 16). The resulting difficulty becomes more apparent when we consider Kohlberg’s account of development.

3.2 Kohlberg’s account of progress

Kohlberg describes five stages of development subsequent to the first and he offers an account ofhow development from one to the other occurs. He does not claim that people inevitably reach stage six; though he does claim that there is no reaching a higher stage without passing through all the intermediate ones. In the later work there are some gestures towards a shadowy or “soft” seventh stage - see Kohlberg, Devine and Hewer ( I 983, pp. 4 I ff.).

There is a well known problem that plagues any theory of cognitive development that posits qualitatively different developmental stages: How does the individual manage to pass from one stage to another? Notice that Hilbert assumed the existence ofthe intuition ofspace whole and entire. There is no talk ofits emerging through radically different stages, though in fairness Hilbert was not engaged in giving a developmental account of the intuition of space.

Consistent with the teaching of Piaget, Kohlberg denies that progress in moral reasoning is to be explained mainly by forces external to the developing youngster. Development is due mainly to the mind’s own resources in reaction to certain experiences. Kohlberg cites with approval the view of a researcher

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘35 that “cognitive conflict is the central ‘motor’ for . , . upward movement” (Kohlberg, 1984, p. 146). Cognitive conflict is thought to arise from frustration in achieving one’s goals or in attempting to persuade others about the probity of one’s current moral position. Essential to the process seems to be the ability to place oneself in someone else’s shoes. “Opportunities to role take are opportunities to experience conflict or discrepancy between one’s own actions and evaluations and the action and evaluation of others” (Kohlberg, 1984,

I believe there is much of value in this claim about cognitive conflict and placing oneself in another’s shoes - or “moral musical chairs” as Kohlberg calls i t in his later writings. Unfortunately, in the context of Kohlberg’s theory, i t is both implausible and extremely vague. The implausibility relates to the claim ofuniversality. Kohlberg held that the resolution ofconflict at any stage is necessarily unique. That is implicit in the claim that the stages of development are universal. The principles that constitute stage n are uniquely determined by the principles ofstage n- I together with the conflict to which they give rise. Ifthis were true i t would set moral reasoning apart from reasoning in all other domains. Philosophers who study scientific discovery, for example, do not claim that there is only one plausible solution to the conflicts that arise either between advocates of rival theories or because of discrepancy between theory and observation. From the perspective of the philosophy of science Kohlberg’s claims about the uniqueness of resolutions in moral reasoning, a field not noted for agreement among theorists, are quite implausible.

Cognitive conflict is also woefully vague as an explanation ofdevelopment in moral reasoning. In the philosophy ofscience advances that are made as a result of cognitive conflict are studied under the rubric of the “problem ofdiscovery”. At one time i t was thought that advances in science might follow a certain logic. After a thorough investigation of the matter Karl Popper ( I 935/ I 968) in a book entitled The logic of scientijc discovery comes sadly to the conclusion that, while scientists like anyone else are obliged to think logically, there is no such thing as a logic ofdiscovery. More particularly logic provides no explanation as to why certain ideas or hypotheses occur to scientists or why they choose one or two conclusions from among the many that are consistent with the data. Perhaps there is a psychology of scientific discovery - see for example Shrager and Langley (in press). But if there is, it will have to go a lot beyond the expression “resolution of cognitive conflict.”

Taking the other person’s point of view, while valuable, is not as decisive a means of advance as Kohlberg maintains. Flanagan (1984, pp. 149 ff.) gives examples to show that the process leaves room for quite diverse maxims. Recently, there have been legal battles in Canada about whether a man has a right to stop a woman he has made pregnant from procuring an abortion. Clearly each of the opposed factions would wish their stance to be made law. Some of those who would give a right to fathers to prevent abortion are

P. 145).

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themselves mothers who have obviously weighed the issue from the side of both the man and the woman. On the other hand, those who oppose the granting of such a right to men include fathers, who must also have weighed the issue from the standpoints of the two would-be parents. And yet the factions take opposing positions. Moral musical chairs, then, does not yield the unique resolution of conflict that Kohlberg’s theory requires. To sum up, it is only fair to say that Kohlberg is lamentably short on a theory of cognitive development; though in this matter he is not worse off than the bulk of his fellow developmental psychologists.

Leave aside for a moment the issue ofhow development is meant to occur and ask instead how one can be sure that from the standpoint of morality each new stage is superior to the one it replaces. Kohlberg ( I 984, p. I 83) offers some quite weak arguments for moral superiority appealing to the cognitive superiority of later reasoning. He uses such expressions as “normative order”, “utility”, “fairness” and “the ideal self’ (that is “the image of the actor as a good person”). These are either hopelessly vague or tautological. For example, even if stage five reasoners should feel that their reasoning is closer to the ideal self than that of stage four reasoners, what right have they to congratulate themselves. They might just be growing smugger and more self satisfied. And utility is, alas, but losely related to morality. Kohlberg also speaks about later stages being more comprehensive than early ones in the sense of embracing more situations. Comprehensiveness is of little use in discerning the moral from the immoral. Great evils often embrace more situations than little ones. I t seems to me that Kohlberg largely took it for granted, as though patently obvious, that the reasoning of later stages was morally superior to that at earlier stages. This is not, however, good enough, for failure in this regard is failure in the essence of the undertaking. I t is failure to show that change from an earlier to a later stage really is progress in the precisely moral aspects of the reasoning. Similar reproaches have been addressed to Kohlberg by Alston (1g71), Flanagan ( I 982a, I 982b, and I 984, chap. 5) and Siege1 ( I 986). The difficulty is conceded by Kohlberg in Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer ( I 983).

There is also a serious problem in assigning anyone’s moral reasoning to a Kohlberg stage. We cannot go into all the stages, so let us focus on stage four. Here is Kohlberg’s (1986) most recent formulation.

This [stage] is based on a conception of the social system as a consistent set of codes and procedures that apply impartially to all members . . . The perspective taken is generally that of a societal, legal, or religious system which has been codified into institutionalized laws and practices. Alternatively, the perspective may be that of some higher moral or religious law which is embodied in the individual’s conscience and which may conflict with institutionalized law. In this case, internal conscience or moral law is equated with some system ofdivine or natural law. (p. 494).

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘37 An example. St. Thomas More refused to take the oath of supremacy

required by Henry VIII because, in conformity with Catholic teaching, he believed that God had made St. Peter and his successors at Rome, not Henry VIII, the head of the Church in England as well as everywhere else. He explained his position in moving letters written from the Tower of London to this daughter, Margaret Roper. To many, including some who do not share his religious views, More is the very type of courageous and refined sensitivity to conscience. Yet Kohlberg, if he follows his own criteria, should rank his moral reasoning at stage four; his act of lonely courage was in obedience to God, not himself. Compare this with the rather stuffy characterization of stage six given by Kohlberg (1981, p. 122): “There is concern about self-condemnation for violating one’s own principles.” We would not admire More nearly so much if he had held out against the king merely because he would have been personally dismayed at his own weakness if he had given in. Even the fuller characterization ofstage six with its various principles (see below) goes nowhere to explain the nobility of More’s moral reasoning and the moral worth of his stance. One lesson is that if More is placed at stage four, i t is impossible to understand why stage six should be taken as morally superior to stage four. The general problem of placing religious obedience at stage four is made by Alston

Kohlberg might also assign More to stage six by the following reasoning. Let us suppose that More had satisfied himself that there is a God, that God is the Platonic ideal of moral goodness, and that God has directed men to act in certain ways. Then, since More had satisfied himself of God’s moral goodness, he had satisfied himselfin principle of the probity ofany ofGod’s directives. So arguing, Kohlberg could reasonably have placed More at stage six, because after all More was a very subtle and deep thinker. But it is also possible, quite reasonably, to say that More was motivated by fear ofHell and hope ofHeaven. So construed, his moral reasoning should be placed at Kohlberg’s stage two. It would be foolhardy to say which motives dominated in the mind of More.

The stages are so loosely described that i t is easy to place a single line ofmoral reasoning at more than one stage. I am not here questioning the reliability of response coding. Rest (1986) cites reliability indices in the region of .95 for the coding procedures. What I am questioning is a rather wooden application ofthe coding instructions. We have just seen that a little imagination might reasonably shift More from stage four to stage six or stage two. Is everyone not entitled to such imaginative interpretation? Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer ( I 98 I ) and Broughton ( I 978) agree that they are. For this reason they eschew the idea ofa scale to measure moral reasoning, insisting instead on an intelligent and imaginative interpretation of responses. But what then prevents the whole enterprize from collapsing? Could we not claim that the subjects placed in stage one have not really understood what was wanted of them or that we misunderstand them? As far as I can see what prevents this is a belief, which I

(‘97’).

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find reasonable, that the moral reasoning of older persons tends to be more articulated and comprehensive than that of youngsters. But this, I take it, is merely the intuition that inspired Piaget’s original work in the area rather than a clear outcome of research. The examination ofThomas More’s stand suggests that there is a serious problem of construct validity in Kohlberg’s system of coding moral reasoning ( I owe this observation to George Madaus). One’s doubts about construct validity are intensified when one realizes that Kohlberg proposed to divine the basic structure of a person’s moral reasoning through a forty minute interview in which the person attempts to deal with just three moral dilemmas. This seems a feeble engine with which to attack the subtleties of the human mind with its defence mechanisms and its capacity for self deception.

What then are we to make of the extensive empirical evidence supporting the claim of uniform development across samples at a single time, across samples at different times and across samples from different countries and cultures, and it does seem impressive at least over the early stages - see Bergling ( I 983). Even if this uniformity were the result of unimaginative application of coding rules it would still be impressive and in need of explanation. This holds good even if I am right in saying that Kohlberg’s techniques fail to discover young people’s practical grasp of moral issues and of moral discourse. It does mean, however, that if I am right the uniformity, whatever its explanation, is not leading us to the child’s competence in moral reasoning. The uniformity is somehow tangential to such reasoning. T o take an illustration from another area. The factor analysis of mental test scores revealed certain uniformities that were once seen as revealing the essential structure of human intelligence. Nowadays, with the development of cognitive psychology and the requirement to be specific in the description of mental processing, the uniformities revealed by factor analysis are thought to be irrelevant to the task of describing the structure of intelligence. I strongly suspect that the uniformities that Kohlberg and his school have unearthed will suffer a similar fate, if ever a remotely adequate theory of the development of moral reasoning is worked out. Tomlinson ( I 986, p. I 18) makes a similar point.

3.3 Kohlberg’s stage six

The final stage on which Kohlberg claims that developing moral reason converges is avowedly Kantian. It comprises a fundamental reverence for the human person. To express it Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer (1983, p. 86) cite Kant’s dictum: “Treat each person as an end in himself and not merely as a means.” The stage is rounded out not by moral principles but by principles for choosing among moral principles. These include The Golden Rule: Do as you would be done by, and Kant’s principle of universalizability: “Act only

The Development of Moral Reasoning * 39 according to that maxim by which you can a t the same time will that it should become a universal law”-frequently cited by Kohlberg (e.g., 1981, p. 274). In the same place he also proposes a principle of consistency. I n his later writings ( 1986, p. 497) he includes a “principle ofutility . . . that is, act so as to maximize the welfare of all individuals concerned.” Though towards the end Kohlberg (e.g., 1986, p. 506) lost confidence that there was an adequate basis in his subjects’ responses to support this formulation of stage six, he seems never to have doubted that this formulation captures an ideal ofmorality. I will assume that in his thinking stage six always constituted at least an ideal towards which developing moral reasoning tends.

We may be tempted to regard the stage-six principles as being on a par with Hilbert’s axioms but that would be a mistake. They are much more on a par with the logical principles that guided Hilbert in the choice of axioms: the mutual independence, consistency and completeness of the axioms. The same logical principles guide the axiomatizing of any area: arithmetic, the predicate calculus, modal logic, mechanics. Kohlberg specifies no axiom of morality (or maxim, as he might call it) such as “Thou shalt not kill” or “Thou shalt not steal”. Neither does he lay out the primitive expressions of morality.

It follows that, despite appearances, Kohlberg has not supplied us with a statement of the final stage to which development in the grasp of moral terms might be expected to lead. Moreover the description ofKohlberg’s final stage is such that we could never be sure whether a person’s reasoning was being guided by it. I fa woman employs a cook to prepare her family meals is she using him as a means to an end rather than as an end in himself. Probably what Kant meant by “treating an individual as an end himself’ was treating him as an autonomous rational agent; that is, giving him satisfying reasons for what he is required to do. If so, is the woman immoral if she asks him to cook salmon filet without explaining why she does not want chicken legs or pork chops? And would her impatience be immoral if the cook was reluctant to cook the salmon on the grounds that he was not fully satisfied about the reasons for doing so? None of this is to deny that human dignity is a matter of the highest moral importance. I t is just very difficult to avoid limpness in formulating a maxim to recognize it. But there is an additional point. Neither Kant nor Kohlberg give us any reason for respecting the dignity ofhuman beings - for Kant’s failure in this connection, see MacIntyre (1984, p. 46). I t follows that in asking us to reverence human beings in the way they do they violate their own principles; for in failing to give us reasons they are by their own lights failing to treat us as autonomous rational agents. Even more crucial from the standpoint of developmental psychology, is Kohlberg’s failure to explain how the supposed development comes about.

Kohlberg also fails to give a reason for adopting any of the general principles that should guide the selection ofmoral maxims, so let us examine whether these principles do lead to morally sound maxims. T o begin, consistency is surely a

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requirement on any system of thought. In fact it is so basic that it seems we can never reasonably doubt its presence. This means that we have to suppose that the principle of consistency is operative a t all stages ofdevelopment. Notice that actual inconsistency of reasoning is no proof that a person is blind to the issue of consistency. The fact is that we could not interpret the utterances of someone whom we genuinely suspected of having no regard for consistency.

Take the principle of utility: act so as to maximize the welfare of all individuals concerned. Would this prevent us from locking up a murderer, on the grounds that prison does not maximize his welfare? Kohlberg would surely say that was not what he meant, because while it is not in the murderer’s interests that he be locked up, it is in the interests ofthe rest ofsociety. True; but then we must weigh the welfare of the majority against that of the minority. What then of Hitler who surely felt that he was doing the world a favour in ridding it ofJews? In this connection it matters not whether such genocide in fact was to the welfare of the majority. The moral status of actions depends on sincere beliefs backed by serious effort to obtain information on the relevant facts; not on the facts themselves. But surely it was the most obvious moral turpitude in Hitler to kill the Jews even if research had convinced him that it was somehow in the interests of the majority to do so. The principle of utility as stated is quite useless to Kohlberg. Nor can it be used in any but a question- begging manner to rank persons for superiority and inferiority of moral reasoning. I cannot go into the relevance ofutility to moral issues in the manner the topic demands. Nevertheless, I do not believe that my remarks are particularly controversial, or that Kohlberg was successful at factoring utility into a satisfying ethical theory.

Weakest of all, perhaps, is the Kantian principle of universalizability: “Act according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” What does this ability to will consist in? Hitler and his henchmen succeeded in willing that various criminal practices should be ratified by law. The maxim gets bite only ifit deals with what we ought and ought not to will. What we want to say is that Hitler and his henchmen ought not to have willed that certain actions be ratified by law. This is bad news for Kohlberg, because in offering the principle he thought he was giving rational grounds for choosing among maxims that ground morality. I t turns out on inspection that his principle has the desired effect only ifit itselfis turned into a moral maxim. In other words, Kohlberg is presupposing foundations of a morality, not guiding us to constitute them. By the same token he is not explaining the origins ofmoral reasoning. Fortunately there is no need for me to go on. The objections to Kant’s foundations of ethics are more than Kohlberg managed to deal with adequately - see, for example, Brentano (1889/ 1969) and MacIntyre (1984, pp. 44 ff.). Kohlberg’s adaptation of Kant has received trenchant criticism (e.g., Alston, 1971; Flanagan, 1984, chap. 5; Locke, 1986) against which, in my view, Kohlberg and his sympathizers have tried in vain to

The Development of Moral Reasoning 14‘

defend themselves (see Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer, I 983; Carter, I 986). I t is not my purpose to dismiss Kant’s ethical thinking out of hand; just to point out that i t is a good deal less secure than Kohlberg seemed to appreciate.

Kohlberg also claims that stage six is a universal, that it is the goal of development in moral reasoning for all people a t all times. I t ought to follow that all philosophers who have given deep thought to the foundations of ethics should agree in their views ofpersons and in the principles by which they choose moral maxims. Unfortunately for Kohlberg, it seems that Kant was quite an original thinker in the area and that few ifany philosophers before him held his position. This might not be so damning ifall philosophers who had read Kant or become acquainted with his views agreed with him on the foundations ofethics. But that is not true k see for example MacIntyre (1966) A briefhistory of ethics, or, to take someone more sympathetic to Kant, Sidgwick’s (1931) Outline of the history of elhics. Indeed Kohlberg had to defend himself against critics who rejected Kantian ethics - see Kohlberg, Levine and Hewer (1983). There is something amusing in the prospect of Kohlberg claiming that there is a set of principles on which all mature ethical thought converges defending himself against mature thinkers who said they did not agree with those principles. I t would seem that Kohlberg has no choice but to conclude that his critics had not developed enough - see Locke ( I 986).

If you feel favourable to Kohlberg you might be inclined to take comfort in the fact that after Hilbert published his Foundations of geometry other mathematicians offered rather different axiomatizations of Euclidean geometry. They certainly did. But they axiomatized exactly the same theory; that is, each axiomatization yields exactly the same theorems. Besides, mathematicians agree that Hilbert had succeeded in axiomatizing the theory. In contrast Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Nietsche agree neither on the theory of morality nor on what actions are moral. The differences are ofa totally different nature from those among geometers. Remember that Kohlberg is not offering us foundations of morality but rather principles to guide the choice of foundations. Here too there are important differences among philosophers. There are just no differences at all among the mathematicians who have axiomatized geometry on the principles that decide if an axiomatization is formally adequate. Kohlberg’s claims for the universality of his stage six are quite unwarranted.

Alternatively you may remark that, after all, our commonsense intuitions of physical space, being Euclidean, are erroneous, because physical space is curved. This does not provide real relief. Euclidean space is a perfectly adequate mathematical space, whose theorems are true independent of the nature of physical space. And our common intuition of space provides the basis for mathematical Euclidean space, as Hilbert showed. Kohlberg’s stage six, I have argued, gives an adequate basis for no satisfactory ethical system whatsoever. Moreover, we arrive at Riemannian geometry, which does describe physical

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space, by dropping the Euclidean axiom (about there being only one line parallel to a given line through a point exterior to the given line). I t follows that our common intuition ofspace is still an adequate basis from which to begin to understand physical space. Nothing of the sort is possible from Kohlberg’s stage-six principles.

Even more telling, the essential point against Kohlberg is not that our basic intuitions ofmorality are false (as our basic intuitions ofphysical space may be) but that Kohlberg’s stage-six principles do not provide an adequate basis for performing an analysis of mature ethical intuition.

To sum up the critique of Kohlberg. I have argued that the technique developed by Kohlberg for eliciting moral reasoning does not get at young people’s moral sensibilities and intuitions. I showed that Kohlberg and his coworkers do not provide children with an adequate foothold from which to enter moral discourse. I argued that Kohlberg’s coding of moral reasoning cannot reasonably assign a person’s moral reasoning to a particular stage; further, that Kohlberg does not give adequate grounds for taking the reasoning of later stages as morally superior to that of earlier ones. I showed that he has failed to specify adequate cognitive means to account for the supposed advance from one stage to another and in particular that such means as he offers do not determine a unique new stage, as the theory ofuniversal stages would demand. Finally, I showed that Kohlberg’s characterization of the sixth stage comes nowhere near an adequate basis for the grounding of mature moral reasoning,

Throughout I have kept in mind children’s access to the meaning of moral terms. You may feel that my project is not Kohlberg’s, that he was not interested in how people came to understand moral discourse but in the development ofmoral reasoning. True, but the distinction will not save him. A necessary prerequisite to mature moral reasoning is a sound grasp of the meaning of moral terms. That in turn, if Hilbert is right, depends on a grasp of the moral principles that delimit the area.

4. AN OLDER THEORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF MORAL REASONING

Seeing that the Piaget-Kohlberg theory is in such poor standing, it is incumbent on me to point, at least, to a sounder alternative. Clearly, what we need is a theory of a basic intuition of the morality of acts, similar to the basic intuition of space. This we find, at least in the form of a sketch, in Franz Brentano (1889/1969), who grounds morality in “certain intuitive presentations” (p. 1 3 ) . What gives rise to these intuitions is spontaneous love for an action as correct or spontaneous revulsion from an action as wrong (p. 24). The idea is that the contemplation of a good action - say a heroic deed - engenders an affective state ofadmiration and love. It is further that the person in whom the affective stage is engendered recognizes it for what it is. In doing so the person invokes a moral predicate “good”. By describing the resulting

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘43 cognitive state as intuitive Brentano emphasizes its spontaneity. It is not the result ofconscious reasoning. The example Brentano gives ofsuch an intuition is a very academic one - the preferability of insight to either error or frustration

Brentano’s position presupposes unlearned moral predicates - or a priori elements, as he puts it (pp. I I 1 - 1 1 3 ) . We can offer two criteria for taking a predicate as unlearned. First, if the property described by the predicate is not perceptible; second, the predicate is a primitive in the relevant system. The combination ofa property’s lacking distinctive perceptual characteristics and of the predicate that denotes it being primitive does it. Take the geometrical notion of position. We saw that it is not perceptible, though the object that occupies it may well be. If, further, “position” is a primitive expression in our conceptualization ofspace, then the two means ofaccess to the notion are ruled out. It cannot have been acquired by perception or by definition or explanation in terms ofmore basic expressions. Similarly, the property ofbeing good (bad) is not a perceptible one. Good (bad) actions do not have a characteristic appearance, such as being performed rapidly or in special attire. Neither is the word “good” (“bad”) definable in terms of pleasure or utility or any expressions more basic than itself, as Moore (1903) shows in the first chapter of Principia ethzca. It follows that it must be unlearned. Not that the English word “good” (“bad”) is unlearned but that some equivalent predicate in the language of thought must be.

But an unlearned predicate is useless unless there are unlearned means for applying i t spontaneously. That is precisely what Brentano posits in “certain intuitive presentations”. This is precisely what Kohlberg fails to do. Kohlberg fails to specify a first foothold for moral thought from which development can take off. To see how Brentano makes provision for development, imagine a mother telling a little boy that i t is naughty to snatch a toy from a companion. T o aid insight she might say ‘3ust imagine how you would feel if someone grabbedyour toy.” This draws the boy’s attention to the fact that he has caused pain to his companion. His mother relies on a spontaneous feeling that the causing of unnecessary pain to another is hateful precisely because it is wrong. She seeks to provoke in the boy a moral intuition. Her success, which alas is not guaranteed, depends on a prior ability in the child to understand moral discourse. Yet the example indicates how an individual with a foothold in moral discourse can make progress in moral reasoning. I t is important to see this, because several persons have wondered whether Brentano’s position precludes the development of moral reasoning. It no more does so than a Hilbertian intuition of space precludes the development of Euclidean geometry.

Hilbert’s holism suggests that the learner needs the axioms ofgeometry at the beginning of development, not just at the end. The reason is that without the axioms learners would be unable to grasp the meaning of geometrical terms; and failing that they could not successfully engage in geometrical discussion in

(P. 2 2 ) .

‘44 John Macnamara

order to learn. Ofcourse, at the beginning learners need not be able to state the axioms. It is enough if they are implicit in their spatial thinking. Neither is it necessary that the implicit axioms be exactly those specified by Hilbert, though it is required that they should be adequate to determine the theory. Many axiomatizations are adequate; we can assume that the mind has its own “psychologically real” one.

At first it might appear that Brentano and Hilbert part company on the need for principles. Brentano states flatly: “I am thoroughly at one with . . .John Locke, that there are no innate moral principles” (Brentano 188911969, p. 5) . What he must mean is that there are no innate moral principles known to the mind, because elsewhere he makes explicit provision for the operation of such principles in the mind. Their function is to ground intuition, not as a blind natural tendency but as insight into evident truth - Brentano (1956, p. 165). Here he is echoing the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas - for an excellent exposition of Aquinas’s teaching on the subject see Caldera’s ( I 980) Le jugement par inclination chez Saint Thomas D’Aquin. Aquinas spoke about judgement by inclination or judgement inspired by “connaturalism” between the will and those things that are for a person’s good. The harmony between a person and those things that are for his or her welfare can be destroyed by a vicious life (Summa theologica, 2-2,46,6 and 2-2, I 23, I 2 ) , but the innocent and the virtuous judge well from a moral standpoint, at least in relatively simple cases, even if they cannot give reasons for their judgement (Summa theologica, I , I , 6 and 3) .

So far this is quite in deeping with Hilbert’s starting point in the intuition of space except that Hilbert requires that intuitively invoked predicates be supported by adequate principles or axioms. So far as I am aware, Brentano makes no provision for a suitable set of naturally applied moral principles, but Aquinas does. I refer to his doctrine ofsynderesis (e.g. Summa theologica, I , 79, I 2

and I 3) . Synderesis is the system of basic moral principles that the mind applies instinctively, principles that have to do with an individual’s physical, social and intellectual welfare. Though they function effectively in the individual’s mind, the individual does not know them naturally in the sense of being able to formulate them. The job of formulating them falls to the student of ethics who analyses our intuitions and deduces the principles that guide them. Aquinas did not attempt to specify the system ofprinciples, being content to exemplify them with the fundamental principle of morality: Do good and avoid evil. Perhaps it would not be excessively bold to suggest that another such principle might be: I t is evil to inflict unnecessary pain. Today, in the shadow of the computer, we can explain Aquinas’s general doctrine a little better than previously. Operating principles that are not known suggest a system of procedures; that is, devices that automatically perform certain operations when certain conditions are satisfied. Not wanting, however, because ofmatters relating to intentionality, to concede that the mind is adequately modelled by a computer, I prefer to call the principles of synderesis “procedure-like” devices. The function of such a device

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘45

would be to invoke the predicates “good” and “evil” (or better, their counterparts in the language of thought) whenever an action has been grasped as satisfying the antecedent conditions for applying the operation. Aquinas and Brentano (for he certainly knew and accepted Aquinas’s teaching on synderesis) then are very much in the spirit of Hilbert when they endow the learner at the beginning of development with the basic principles of morality. These explain the existence of moral intuitions and the ability of children to catch on to the meaning ofmoral discourse. It will come as no surprise to people familiar with Brentano and Aquinas to be told that this doctrine is to be found in embryonic form in Aristotle’s Nicomachean ethics, (e.g. Book 6, chaps 6 and 7 ) .

In contrast, Kohlberg was led to conclude that the majority of people never reach his stage six. This would mean that the majority could not understand the meaning of moral terms. I take it that any developmental theory claiming that the majority ofadults cannot understand a system ofeveryday words stands self- condemned. No use replying that stage-four and stage-five principles have some overlap with those ofstage six. At best, this would imply that most adults had only a distorted adumbration of the meaning of moral terms. This is just not good enough.

Interestingly enough there is in the contemporary literature a move back to a rule-based grasp of morality -- see Darley and Shultz’s (1990) excellent summary. There is not in this literature, so far as I am aware, any explicit account of the origin of these rules, though there seems to be an assumption that the basic rules ofmorality are taught. But this, on our analysis, is surely wrong, for it leaves totally unexplained and mysterious the learner’s ability to grasp the meaning ofsuch principles and ofthe moral terms they contain. Neither is there any suggestion in the new literature of a basic moral intuition. I t follows that while the new literature gives a more realistic description of children’s moral sensibilities at different ages, i t is not superior to the Piaget-Kohlberg line in its explanation of development. It goes without saying that the new approach makes no allusion to our next topic.

5 . IDEAL ELEMENTS

Ideal elements play a central part in the mathematical thought of Hilbert. It would be odd if they did not also play some part in moral thought and consequently in the development of moral reasoning. Ideal elements are all too obvious in the moral thought of Plato, but it is instructive to see the part they play in the more mundane thought ofhis pupil Aristotle. We can do this best in the space available by taking a single example, friendship. Friendship in its perfection for Aristotle is the disposition ofgood persons, who are equals, to seek each other’s good (Nicomachean Ethics, Book 8, chap. 3) . Such friendship, he sadly remarks, is rare. Much could be said of friendship in Aristotle and of the

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central place it receives in his ethics. I merely want to draw attention to the fact that perfect friendship is an ideal element with respect to human relations. For perfect moral goodness is not in practice attainable and the friendships of good men always depart to some extent from the Aristotelean ideal.

Consider what happens with the introduction of new ideal elements in Christianity. For Christians, all persons are equal as children of God.

When the fullness of time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman . . . that we might enter upon our adoption as sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit ofhis Son into our hearts crying “Abba, Father!” (St. Paul, Galatians, 4.4-6).

In the hands of St. Thomas Aquinas the Aristotelean doctrine of friendship is transformed to accommodate this new element - see for example the Summa Theologica, 2 - 2 , 2 , 3 . Just one point to illuminate the whole. Whereas Aristotle states categorically (Book 8, chap. 7) that there can be no friendship between God and man, so great is the gulf of inequality between them, St. Thomas, appealing to St. Paul, claims that there can, thus making room among other things for lives of religious contemplation. Other ideal elements that are new with respect to Aristotle are evangelical poverty, humility, and chastity.

Unfortunately I do not know of any theory in which the notion of ideal elements in ethics is worked out, so what I have to say is necessarily sketchy. Suffice it to note that geometrical terms may mean different things in different geometrical theories as a function of the ideal elements in the theories. A proposition that is true in one theory may not be true in another. Witness the proposition that the internal angles ofa triangle sum to two right angles; true in Euclidean geometry, false in the geometries of Riemann and Lobatschewski, which do not have Euclid’s axiom of parallels. Similarly, Aristotle would not admire the humility of, say, Ghandi, whereas a Christian could. It is necessary in this connection to point out that ideal elements cannot be added at random. They must serve the purpose of extending or completing the system to which they are added and they must respond to some of the deeper aspirations of the human heart.

Ifwhat I say here is true, and it would seem to be, the idea ofa universal set of moral principles equally available to all rational people at all places and in all times is an illusion. Such a universal and absolute ethics, sought by Kant through the categorical imperative, and built by Kohlberg into his theory ofthe development ofmoral reasoning, is bound to lead people astray. Which is not to say that there can be no such thing as a basic or minimal ethics which any system of moral maxims must incorporate. In this minimum one would expect to find some requirement to tell the truth, to keep promises, to respect the persons and property offamily and friends and so on. But it would be as great a mistake to limit ethics to such a minimum as it would be to limit geometry to the ideal elements of the common intuition of space.

The Development of Moral Reasoning ‘47 6. CONCLUSION

Though the foregoing may appear academic and abstruse its implications for education are very practical. One good thing about Piaget and Kohlberg’s theory ofmoral development is that morality is not to be imposed on a child but must develop by the child’s own resources and thought processes. This is surely right. At the same time, in the area ofmoral reasoning, as I fear in all others, a baneful effect of Piaget’s work is to be found. Both he and Kohlberg substantially underrate the moral reasoning capacities and the moral sensibilities ofchildren. We get a far better assessment ofchildren’s capacities in these matters by watching how children react to injustice, generosity, frustration and suffering. We can also learn a lot from their ability to react appropriately to the moral elements in stories. All this means that we can engage children in serious moral discussion at a far younger age than Piaget and Kohlberg would have us believe. In fact, parents begin moral instruction almost from infancy, which shows that their instinctive behaviour is a t odds with Kohlberg’s theory.

As in geometry, we were constrained to posit extensive unlearned resources to ground development in moral reasoning. This is not popular in the area, though it should not surprise psychologists who work in perception or psycholinguistics. Curiously, if I read it aright, our position is quite in keeping with the early chapters ofcenesis. To my mind, the main import of the story ofthe creation and fall of Adam and Eve is to explain the fact that our sense of morality transcends the behaviour of our parents and acquaintances and even our own. Why, for example, is our sense of justice not some sort of average of our lifetime experience? Genesis offers the answer that we are all descendants of Adam and Eve and that they passed onto us an echo of the state ofperfectjustice in which they were created. This is a genetic reading of the story. I am not sure it is correct as exegesis but all that we have seen in the present paper leads me to hope it is, because a genetic account is precisely what is needed.

Acknouiledgemcnt~ This is the text of a paper read at a conference on “Cross-cultural Comparability and Applicability of Primary and Secondary Socialization”, Jagellonian University, Cracow, September 1989. I am extremely grateful to the following persons who read and commented on an earlier version: Paul Bloom, Vishwas Govitrikar, Michael Hallett, Joyre Macnamara, George Madaus, Michael Makkai, Morton Mendelson, Keith Niall, Gonzalo Reyes, Janusz Raykowski, Tom Shultz. The paper was also read in the Faculty of Education, Boston College; Department of Psychology, MIT; the Department of Psychology, Universitt de Montrkal; and the Centre for Cognitive Studies, Carleton College, Minnesota. It benefitted from the discussions that ensued. I owe a special debt to Adam Niemczynski of the Jagellonian University for prolonged and penetrating discussions of all the issues raised. It was in discussions with

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him that I first conceived the idea of the paper. The writing of the paper was supported by an NSERC grant to the author.

John Macnamara Department of Psychology McGill University 1205 Docteur Penteld Avenue Montreal (Lukbec Canada H 3 A I B I

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