Kohlbergian Theory: A Philosophical Counterinvitation

Abstract

There can be little doubt that the work of Lawrence Kohlberg in the fields of moral psychology and moral education is (a) important and (b) of interest to moral philosophers. It is important because represents a research program of tremendous scope that offers promise of a coherent, transcultural model of human moral development, a model that appears to be both methodologically and substantively different from the dominant one in the field: that provided by social-learning theory. Its interest to moral philosophers is more elusive. One has the sense that such a rich picture of human development should somehow be relevant to philosophical ethics-but is not easy to say precisely what the relevance amounts to. Or, at least, that is the burden of these comments. Puka invites his readers to appreciate Kohlberg's efforts both in terms of their empirical warrant and in terms of their philosophical significance. Most of the paper is devoted to discussion of the empirical warrant, defending Kohlberg's stages and sequence against alternative models (continuum, complex stage, and social learning/information processing). In this comment, I shall not address this (significant) part of the argument except to say that I am sympathetic but ill-equipped to assess fully the psychological data. The first part of the paper is devoted to questions of philosphical significance. I shall concentrate my remarks on this part of the paper, being patient with its brevity but wishing that were elaborated more fully for a philosophical audience. Puka laments the fact' that philosophical commentators have most often fixed on relatively peripheral features of Kohlberg's theory of moral development to the neglect of its central core. He seems to be inviting philosophers to cool it with respect to potshots at questionable philosophical claims in the Kohlbergian literature and to take a fresh look at the basic assumptions (conclusions?) of cognitive-developmentalism. In order to do justice to Puka's suggestions, as I understand them, I propose to offer something of a counterinvitation to the Kohlbergian. In the course of developing this counterinvitation, I hope I will treat fairly the main observations that Puka offers us, though I will press beyond those observations. It should be emphasized from the outset, however, that the spirit of the comments to follow is openly constructive. My