Kohlberg's stages of moral development vs. Ethics of Care

[R. U. Serious]

After the lengthy discussion with LongVin in the other thread about ethical behaviour and personal benefit ( http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=89806 ), it got me thinking and I stumbled across something I had read a few years earlier, namely the model of Kohlberg for moral development. The wikipedia article has some stuff on it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg%2 ... evelopment

Kohlberg divides the moral development into 6 stages (grouped by two into three levels). The first level (pre-conventional) covers the following stages:

In stage one, individuals focus on the direct consequences that their actions will have for themselves. For example, an action is perceived as morally wrong if the person who commits it gets punished. In addition, there is no recognition that others' points of view are any different from one's own view. This stage may be viewed as a kind of authoritarianism.

Stage two espouses the what's in it for me position, right behavior being defined by what is in one's own best interest. Stage two reasoning shows a limited interest in the needs of others, but only to a point where it might further one's own interests, such as "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." In stage two concern for others is not based on loyalty or intrinsic respect. Lacking a perspective of society in the pre-conventional level, this should not be confused with social contract (stage five), as all actions are performed to serve one's own needs or interests. For the stage two theorist, the perspective of the world is often seen as morally relative.

Emphasis by me (doesn't that fit a certain position in the other thread rather well?).

The next level (conventional, which again includes 2 stages) revolves largely around filling social roles, the importance of intentions, and following laws, dictums and social conventions that already exist out of a sense of duty or obligation (Fundamentalism is included as an example). The last level (post-conventional, covering the last 2 stages) covers morals based on a kind of social contract, that can/should be imprved if necessary; i.e. conventions are exmained and questioned according to abstract reasoning and using universal ethical principles. (The wikipedia article probably explains it better, I just didn't want to quote too much stuff here. So better read and quote that if you disagree).


Personally I intuitively find that model to work well in describing and explaining the moral outlook of many of the people I argued with. Especially the part about moving between stages, which happens according to the theory when facing moral dillemas, that cannot be satisfactorily solved at the current level (provided that the actor also acquired increased competence in both psychologically and socially balancing conflicting value-claims).


What are your opinions on Kohlberg's model?


What was new to me, was the stuff in the criticism part:

One criticism of Kohlberg's theory is that it emphasizes justice to the exclusion of other values. [...] His theory was initially developed based on empirical research using only male participants; Gilligan argued that it did not adequately describe the concerns of women. She developed an alternative theory of moral reasoning that is based on the ethics of caring [more].
[...]
women have traditionally been taught a different kind of moral outlook that emphasizes solidarity, community, and caring about one's special relationships.
[...]
The justice view of morality focuses on doing the right thing even if it requires personal cost or sacrificing the interest of those to whom one is close. The care view would instead say that we can and should put the interests of those who are close to us above the interests of complete strangers, and that we should cultivate our natural capacity to care for others and ourselves.

Which I found... just odd (I am male - so is that suppoed to be the reason for that?). A concept of tribalism is supposed to be a better concept for morals and ethics, than justice? Anybody here agreeing with that, or care (no pun intended) to help me understand it better?

[The_Nice_Guy]

I think his model is pretty accurate, especially when describing the ethical growth of individuals in most normal contexts.

I do have something to add though. I think anybody who manages to attain the sixth stage is essentially Nieztche's uberman, living by his own moral codes derived from the values he holds dearest to himself. In this, I disagree with Kohlberg, as he leaves no room for those who value something other than the ones that most people aspire to, even if they might possess perfectly sound reasoning, only to arrive at different conclusions because they value different things, eg. faith, life, power.

This model makes the supposition that justice is the most important terminal value. Not everybody accepts that, and it could even be wrong anyway. But in the proper and normal contexts we operate in, it works rather well.

TWG

[Darth Wong]

I like Kohlberg's model (assuming it is accurately described by the Wikipedia entry) up until stage 6 where it claims that the only consideration at the highest level of moral development is justice, with no room for sympathy. In that sense, I would tend to agree with the critics who claimed that it represented an infusion of Kohlberg's own prejudice into his argument. It has always been the domain of patriarchal societies to uphold justice without sympathy as the highest moral concern, as his critics pointed out (although they don't do a very good job of explaining their concern, describing it as tribalism instead of mercy/sympathy).

To be honest, I think it could be argued that stage 5 and stage 6 should actually be reversed. It is more enlightened to place social welfare above any abstract principle as a basis of morality, whereas he seems to think that the ultimate stage of morality is to base morality purely upon certain abstract principles such as justice. To place one's own made-up moral principles above social welfare actually indicates arrogance to me.