Understanding Reasons

Abstract

Abstract Talk of ‘stages of moral development’ ‘and ‘moral reasoning’ raises the question of what it is to understand and use a reason. This is chiefly a matter of knowing a rule and its application. The rules and concepts required for the basic form of moral reasoning can be taught without difficulty to quite young children, in so far indeed as they do not grasp them already. The kind of education required for getting children (or adults) to prefer to use the rules and concepts is another matter. The ‘stages’ are not likely to be stages of cognitive reasoning, but backgrounds or regimes which encourage certain preferences for this or that type of reason.