Moral Reasoning and Moral Developments

This section investigates how we observe our own moral standards and enforce them to material situations and issues. It foremost looks at the process of moral development itself.

We at times assume that a person's values are shaped during childhood and do not change. In fact, a great deal of psychological research as well as one's own personal experience depicts that as people mature, they change their values in very deep and profound ways. Just as people's emotional, physical and cognitive abilities develop as they age, so also their capacity to deal with moral issues develops as they move through their lives.

Moral Reasoning & Kohlbergs' Research

Lawrence Kohlberg recognized six stages of moral development:

Level One: Pre-conventional Stages

1.   Punishment and Obedience Orientation - At this stage, the physical results of an act entirely determine the goodness or badness of that act. The child's reasons for doing the correct things are to avoid punishment or defer to the superior physical power of authorities. There is little wakefulness that others have needs similar to one's own.

2.   Instrument and Relativity Orientation- At this phase, right actions become those that can supply as instruments for fulfilling the child's own needs or the needs of those for whom the child cares.

At these first two stages, the child is able to answer to rules and social expectations and can apply the labels bad, good, right, and wrong. However, these rules are seen as something externally imposed on the self. Right and wrong are interpreted in conditions of the pleasant or painful results of actions or in terms of the physical power of those who set the rules.

Level Two: Conventional Stages

Upholding the expectations of one's own family, peer group, or nation is now consider as valuable in its own right, regardless of the results.

1.   Interpersonal Concordance Orientation - Fine behavior at this early conventional stage is living to the expectations of those for whom one feels affection, loyalty and trust such as family and friends. Accurate action is conformity to what is generally expected in one's role as a good daughter, son, brother, friend and so on.

2.   Law and Order Orientation - Right and wrong at this more grown-up conventional stage now  come  to  be  determined  by  loyalty  to  one's  own  larger  nation  or  surrounding society. Laws are to be upheld except where they clash with other fixed social duties.

Level Three: Post-conventional, Autonomous, or Principled Stages

1.   Social Contract Orientation - At this first post-conventional phase, the person becomes alert that people hold a multiplicity of conflicting personal opinions and views and emphasizes fair ways of attaining consensus by contract, agreement and due process.

2.   Universal Ethical Principles Orientation - At this last stage, right action comes to be defined in terms of moral principles chosen due to their logical universality, comprehensiveness and consistency.

At these stages the person no longer merely accepts the values and norms of the groups to which he or she belongs. In fact, the person now tries to see situations from a point of view that independently takes everyone's interests into consideration. The person questions the laws and values that society has adopted and redefines them in terms of self-chosen moral principles that can be justified in rational terms.

Kohlberg's research found that many people stay stuck at an initial stage of moral development. His framework implies that later phases are better than the earlier ones. Kohlberg has been criticized for this implication and for not advancing any argument to back it up.

Both Gilligan and Kohlberg agree that there are phases of growth in moral development, moving from a focus on the self through conventional stages and onto a mature stage where we critically and thoughtfully examine the competency of our moral standards. Therefore, one of the central objectives of ethics is the inspiration of this moral development by analyzing, discussing and criticizing the moral reasoning that we and others do, finding one set of principles "better" when it has been examined and establish to have better and stronger reasons supporting it.

Carol Gilligan, a feminist psychologist has also criticized Kohlberg's theory on the grounds that it describes male and not female patterns of moral development. Gilligan claims that there is a "female" approach to moral issues that Kohlberg ignores.