Considerations in Ethical Problem Solving Kohlberg s Stages of Moral Development

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1 Different Approaches to Feminist Two different responses by two adults to the question, What does morality mean to you? Response A: I think it is recognizing the right of the individual, the rights of other individuals, not interfering with those rights. Act as fairly as you would have them treat you. I think it is basically to preserve the human being s right to existence. I think that is the most important. Secondly, the human being s right to do as he pleases, again without interfering with somebody else s rights. Response B: We need to depend on each other, and hopefully it is not only a physical need but a need of fulfillment in ourselves, that a person s life is enriched by cooperating with other people and striving to live in harmony with everybody else, and to that end, there are right and wrong, there are things which promote that end and that move away from it, and that way it is possible to choose in certain cases among different courses of action that obviously promote or harm that goal. Virginia Held 1 2 Considerations in Ethical Problem Solving Kohlberg s Stages of Moral Development A: i) using logic and reason to find a solution; ii) being aware of and concerned about the rights of those affected by one s actions; iii) making sure one doesn t interfere with another s rights; iv) treating everyone equally; v) following the principles of justice, impartiality, and fairness; vi) making sure one s actions can be defended in terms or rules that are universal and apply to all B: i) bringing love, care, and compassion to the situation; ii) being aware of and concerned about people s needs; iii) looking for ways that one can help people; iv) trying to arrive at a solution that everyone could accept; v) trying to connect with the people involved and working to create communication and cooperation; vi) being attentive to relationships and one s responsibilities to other people Kohlberg broke moral development into six stages: 1. Punishment and Reward Stage: children are motived to obey authority and avoid punishment 2. Individual Instrumental Purpose and Exchange Stage: children do what meets their needs and occasionally the needs of others 3. Mutual Expectations and Conformity Stage: adolescents conform to social standards to gain others approval 4. Social System and Conscience Maintenance Stage: mature adolescents do their duty to show respect for authority and maintain the social order 5. Social Contract/Utility Stage: people follow rules they perceive as rational and serving the public good 6. Universal Ethical Principles Stage: people act on universal principles of justice, reciprocity and respect for others 3 4

2 Kohlberg and Gilligan s Problem Gilligan s Two Models of Ethical Reasoning In his research into how and why people think differently in different stages of development, Kohlberg noticed that women and girls seldom developed past stage 3 whereas men and boys often progressed to stages 5 and 6 Kohlberg s research is not only interested in how people think differently, but also in ranking the best ways of thinking about morality Gilligan doubts the higher stages really are better ways of thinking about morality Gilligan argues there are two models of ethical reasoning of justice: rules, rights and logic predominate moral reasoning of care: relationships, responsibilities, and emotions predominate moral reasoning 5 6 Held s Man of Reason Public and Private Distinction Whatever the conception of the man of reason through different historical periods, what is common to each conception is the juxtaposition of the man of reason with its opposite, the characteristics of the feminine Rationality is that characteristic of man which transcends feminine emotion In the public realm, man leaves his animal nature and creates history He creates governments and laws and risks his life to protect society Morality guides behavior in the public realm Reason controls emotion What is distinctly human occurs in the public domain Reason guides the individual through storms of emotion Reason makes one responsible and passion is irresponsible Reason serves male endeavors and emotion displays female weaknesses Reason conquers Unreason In the private, household, realm, women reproduce life and serve the natural needs of men (e.g., food, shelter, biological aspects) 7 8

3 Private Realm Not Part of Morality An Interpretation of Hobbes Heyd: dismisses a mother s sacrifice for her child when considering supererogatory acts A mother s sacrifice results from a natural relationship and instinctive feelings and these feelings lie outside morality Ryan: when arguing against economic theories which assume that man is rational and self-interested he fails to consider motherhood as a counter-example to self-interested behavior In both cases, motherhood is discounted or ignored and is thought to be outside the realm of morality Motherhood is a biological activity Man in the state of nature springs from the soil a fully formed egoistic individual consider men as if but even now spring out of the earth, and suddenly, like mushrooms, come to full maturity, without all kind of engagement with each other The Citizen Hobbes s skips over human reproduction and early nurturing in conceptualizing the rational man at the center of his social contract No moral theory has considered motherhood as providing moral insight 9 10 Other Views of Women Gender-biased Reason Permeates Morality Rousseau: women must be trained to submit to the will of men or else women s sexual power will lead both to disaster Kant: women cannot achieve full moral personhood and lose their charm if they try to be rational like men Hegel: women s concern for their families is a threat to the universal moral and social goals to which men should aspire The association of reason with scientific knowledge and moral knowledge has made the pursuit of morality itself a male endeavor, guided by reason and rational principles 1. If ethics had been a search for universal human principles, then it would have incorporated concepts that were indifferent to gender and gender-based associations (or at least have incorporated these gender-biased concepts in equal measure). 2. But, the concepts of morality and knowledge are gender-biased (and not employed in equal measure). 3. So, ethics has not been a search for universal, human principles

4 Why Has Moral Philosophy Overlooked Trust Between Humans? How Is Moral Theory to Correct Itself? Baier thinks that trust between human is the central aspect of moral life She thinks moral philosophy overlooks trust because the great moral theorists in our tradition not only are all men, they are mostly men who had minimal adult dealings with (and so were then minimally influenced by) women these men were clerics, misogynists, and puritan bachelors who focused on and wrote about distanced relations between more or less free and equal adult strangers Held argues that for moral theory to correct itself will require complete transformation If moral theory were to just incorporate the missing gender into rational ethical principles, then ethics would still be without the moral promptings of the heart a voice from the household a view concerned with the nurturance of children and the cultivation of social relations Is There a Unitary Feminist? I. Reason and Emotion Two reason-based approaches to ethics There is no unitary feminist ethics Kant: the search for general, abstract, universal moral principles which are to guide rational beings Three themes of bias which the various approaches to feminist ethics addresses The categorical imperative is that rational principle which commands us to act in a certain way and is independent of emotions and desires I. Reason and Emotion II. The Public and the Private III. The Concept of the Self Mill: utilitarianism demands a rational choice in selecting the course of action which maximizes the satisfaction of desires and interests The utilitarian calculation provides a rational process for determining moral decisions Both reason-based approaches rely on abstract, universal principles as the source of moral guidance 15 16

5 A Universal Moral Theory Requires Equal Consideration Gilligan on Women s Concerns If there is to be a universal moral theory, then it must given equal consideration to women s experiences and concerns as well as men s What are women s moral concerns? Women s moral concerns arise in actual relationships Women s moral concerns include moral emotions Gilligan and other psychologists suggest that women are more concerned with preserving actual relationships and expressing care toward those for whom they feel responsible of care is the name given to women s natural moral orientation Women s natural moral orientation is to care for others in a personal way Women have an overriding concern for relationships and responsibilities to those for whom they care Why Think Women Have a Different Style of Moral Thinking?, I Women might think differently due to social conditioning of care could be the result of the social conditioning of women; women merely adopt the values of the roles they inhabit Held warns against this view: feminists consider their own experiences as reflecting an ethics of care and not simply social conditioning Why Think Women Have a Different Style of Moral Thinking?, II Women might think differently due to some intrinsic feature Evolutionary psychology provides a possible answer to why women are intrinsically caring From a reproductive standpoint, the main difference between men and women is that men can father hundreds of children during their reproductive lifetimes and women can mother far fewer because of the prolonged gestation period Thus, the reproductive strategies of men and women will differ Men will want to impregnate as many females as possible investing only the resources necessary to keep the maximum number of offspring alive Women will want to invest more time and energy into each child and find mates who will make the same investment to their offspring These different reproductive interests might explain why women intrinsically have an ethics of care 19 20

6 of Care Makes Room for Emotions II. The Public and The Private 1. of Care thinks morality requires development of moral emotions Moral emotions contrast with moral reasons Instead of rational control of the emotions, ethics of care endorses the cultivation of desirable emotions Gender bias has distorted the conceptions of the public and private realms Feminists object to the idea that what occurs in the household is beyond politics 2. Emotions are weighed in moral understanding The private realm is affected by politics, from abortion to unequal earning power to lack of social protection for women against domestic violence One cannot understand caring relationships in terms of abstract rules or by rational calculation Emotions are seen as a partial means of understanding morality 3. Morality Demands Trust Feminists object to the characterizations of what is natural in the public and private realms What is natural for women is mothering activity which is private and a common biological activity Acting to develop and maintain trusting relationships is different than acting according to rational principles What is natural for men is political activity which is public, and to the extent the political activity requires rationality it become a specifically human activity Human Mothering Forms Social Morality Motherhood and the Creative Spirit Held objects to the notion that human mothering is no different than mothering by other animals Human mothering contributes to and develops the characteristics which are thought to be distinctly human Human mothering shapes language and culture It forms social personhood and develops morality Raising and shaping new humans is a creative activity no different from developing new products Creative spirit is not limited to the public realm The activity of creating new social persons and new kinds of persons is potentially the most transformative human activity of all. And it suggests that morality should concern itself first of all with this activity, with what its norms and practices ought to be, and with how the institutions and arrangements throughout society and the world ought to be structured to facilitate the right kinds of development of the best kinds of new persons. Human mothering is no more natural than any other human activity 23 24

7 Argument for Morality of Motherhood III. The Concept of Self 1. Morality ought to concern itself with that activity which contributes the most to the moral, social, political, economic and legal realms. 2. Motherhood, the most transformative human activity of all, is the activity of creating and nurturing new social persons and, as such, contributes the most to the moral, social, political, economic and legal realms. 3. Therefore, morality ought to concern itself with motherhood. Advantage of focusing on the development of the social person is that it shifts the focus on human relations away from the impersonal, public domain and toward private relationships that stress shared common interests In traditional approaches to ethics, the concept of the self is usually understood as the egoistic self in contrast to the universal, or others in general In seeing the problems of ethics as problems of reconciling the interests of the self with what would be right or best for everyone, standard ethics has neglected the moral aspects of the concern and sympathy which people actually feel for particular others, and what moral experience in this intermediate realm suggests for an adequate morality Domain of Particular Others The Relational Self The concept of an isolated, individual self is mistaken In the domain of particular others, the self is constituted and evaluated in relation to others In pursuing our own interests we have ties to others and these ties are part of our self-identity For example, it is difficult to understand how one might break down the mother-child relationship into individual gains and losses for each member; what has moral value in a motherchild relationship is different than and not comparable to a universal, egalitarian ethic The relational self stands in contrast to the self-sufficient individual of traditional ethical theories Studies into the feminist conception of the relational self observes that the self has a need for recognition, a need to understand the other, and both these needs are compatible Feminist ethic is necessary to examine and understand this aspect of morality 27 28

8 Goal of Mutuality Held s Three Themes The feminist conception of the relational self has a goal of mutuality The mother-child relationship creates a mutually empathetic relationship Goal of mutuality is rarely achieved in adult relationships due to gender differences Men seek autonomy and power over others and undervalue the caring relations of women Psychologists look to mother-daughter relationships as examples of the relational self and goal of mutuality Held s three themes do apply to many feminist ethical theories In particular they apply to Care-focused ethics But, there are Power-focused feminist ethics which emphasize other features The best example of autonomy is not property (hiding the self behind property) but child-rearing, where interdependence is a constant component of autonomy Power-focused Feminist Power-focused feminist ethic thinks ethical questions cannot be addressed independently from questions about the power structures and the patterns of dominance and oppression that exist in society According to Jaggar, the goal of power-focused feminist ethics is to a) articulate moral critiques of actions and practices that perpetuate women s subordination b) to prescribe morally justifiable ways of resisting such actions and practices c) and, to envision morally desirable alternatives that will promote women s emancipation The caring self should care for herself as well as others and seek the freedom that will make this possible 31 Power-focused Feminist Criticisms of of Care 1. of care s emphasis on the family appeals to the very oppressive structures which a feminist ethics is trying to overcome By appealing to these oppressive structures, ethics of care reinforces women s secondary status The care perspective arose from oppressive conditions and may not reflect genuine morality 2. of care offers an inappropriate description of female identity Why think women are or should be sacrificially altruistic? Isn t one who is excessively altruistic too easily exploited? 3. of care s emphasis on family relationships is inadequate for public and political morality Mother-child relationship is one of unequal power and control The ideal political sphere is one of equality 32

9 Can Feminist Avoid Abstract Universal Principles? Loyal, Dependable, Caring What does it mean to be loyal, dependable, caring, etc.? Feminist ethics criticizes ethical theories based on abstract, universal principles But, can Feminist ethics avoid these universal principles? Isn t it the case that Feminist ethics says that everyone should be caring, compassionate, and concerned with the needs of others? If these principles of caring are to serve as moral guidelines, then why can t or aren t they universal principles? In exhibiting these characteristics, isn t one being a certain kind of person? Virtue Theory sees morality and being moral as essentially connected with having certain traits of character These traits of character are suited to both the public and private realms The public realm requires traits of justice and beneficence The private realm requires traits of love and caring Should we view the of Care as a kind of Virtue? 33 34