Advantages of higher justice reasoning

When it is argued that the ethic of care is not applied in resolving conflicting claims, it actually means that those claims are derived from rights and duties embedded in a larger and more abstract system than personal networks. Justice reasoning should offer conceptual tools to grasp moral problems concerning people that are strangers to each other, as well as those concerning society as a whole, even mankind. This contribution becomes evident beyond Stage 3 of interpersonal morality, when the sociomoral perspective

of the society as a system gradually emerges (see Table 2, p. 70).

Especially postconventional reasoning beyond Stage 4 has been argued to be superior to reasoning at lower stages because it encompasses a beyond-the-society perspective, and offers a moral groundwork for a critical attitude towards conventional-societal morality (Kohlberg & al., 1983; Rest & al., 1999). Kohlberg (1984) also argued that persons with postconventional morality grow into more autonomous moral agents. Increased differentiation and integration in cognitive processes is paralleled in increased prescriptivity and universality in moral thought; and consequently, the reasoning is more related to action, is less disturbed by low moral atmosphere, and is more likely to lead to agreements among other (postconventional) moral agents. These proposed advances suggest that postconventional reasoning might be of critical importance in real-life context.³⁰

Several studies in the past support the claim that the higher the individual’s moral reasoning, the more likely it is to lead a moral action.

Kohlberg and Candee (1984) concluded that there is a monotonic relationship between justice stages and judgments of responsibility; the more developed person’s moral reasoning, the more likely she/he is to judge her/himself as responsible for carrying out an action she/he judges to be right in a situation. This was pointed out by Helkama’s (1979) study on the Heinz dilemma: subjects at Stage 5 did not only think that Heinz should steal the drug in order to save his wife’s life, but they also

30Kohlberg et al. (1983) derived from Piaget’s and Kant’s theories autonomous and heteronomous substages, called later Types, within justice reasoning. Type A refers to heteronomous orientation to rules and authority in terms of unilateral respect, whereas Type B refers to autonomous orientation to fairness, equality and reciprocity in terms of mutual respect. Type B reasoning displays certain formal features that are more or less lacking in Type A reasoning, such as reversibility, prescriptivity, universalizability, and a hierarchical ranking of values. In other words, Type B reasoning explicitly fulfills the formal criteria of justice reasoning, whereas in Type A reasoning they remain implicit. The more reasoning progresses towards the highest stage 5, the better it coincides with the Type B criteria. Type B reasoning, also at lower stages, has been found to be more related to action than Type B reasoning (Kohlberg & Candee, 1984; Tappan et al., 1987). Because Kohlberg’s group did not complete their work on A and B types, they are excluded from this study.

tended to judge him as responsible for doing it. A series of experimental and real-life studies, from the 1960’s onwards have lent support for this claim. A study of Free Speech Movement participants, originally reported by Haan, Smith and Block (1968), showed that 83% of students at Stage 4/5 or higher thought that it was right to illegally occupy the administration building in order to advocate civil rights (= to take an action) and 73% of them were involved in this action. In the famous obedience experiments by Milgram (1974), most participants at Stage 4 refused to give painful electric shocks to their victims, whereas most participants at lower stages continued to give them at the experiment leader’s order. In McNamee’s (1978) study, only students at Stage 5 intervened personally in order to help an “occasional” drug-stooge searching for help, when the experiment leader refused to help him.

Krebs and Rosenwald (1977) found that Stage 4 and Stage 5 subjects kept a given promise to return a research questionnaire by mail, whereas most Stage 3 subjects returned it late or failed to return it, and most Stage 2 subjects did not return it at all. Cheating in experiments has also been found to be inversely related to moral stages (see Kohlberg & Candee, 1984). An impressive example of the actual adequacy of higher moral reasoning is Kohlberg and Candee’s (1984) analysis of the massacre by American troops at My Lai during the Vietnam War, based on the soldiers’ interviews in media, trial data, and Kohlberg’s dilemmas (sic).

The only soldier who refused to shoot civilians against the super-ordinate’s command demonstrated the highest reasoning among the observed soldiers, a mixture of Stages 4 and 5. Linn (1995, 1996) found as well that postconventional reasoning was proportionally high among soldiers objecting to military actions they found unjustified in Lebanon war and Intifada (42% and 37%). To conclude, higher stage subjects are less likely to orient to quasi-obligations, such as obeying an experiment leader in a simulated situation, more capable of keeping contracts beyond interpersonal relationships, and more autonomous in resisting authorities’

commands they judge immoral. As Tronto (1993, p. 68) puts it:

“Kohlberg’s portrayal of postconventional reasoner presumes that the person understands himself (or herself) to be an actor, a person who acts as an agent in creating and comprehending the moral world. People who passively accept the way the world works cannot arrive at postconventional moral reasoning. Thus, Kohlberg’s interest in postconventional morality is also an interest in moving individuals to an understanding of their moral agency; those at the higher stages are not

only more moral, they are also more fully agents in control of their destiny.”

Postconventional reasoning (when measured by the MJI) has been found to be rare across all samples from different cultures, and even lacking in some rural cultures (Snarey & Keljo, 1991). In Kohlberg’s longitudinal data, 13% reached the postconventional stage of 5 at the ages of 24-36 (Kohlberg & Higgins, 1984).

Armon and Dawson (1997) reported that 20% of their longitudinal, academic participants reached at least Stage 4/5, and none of them reached Stage 5 before the age of 35. Exceptionally, Snarey (1982; Colby & al., 1987) found that postconventional reasoning among Israeli kibbutz founders was quite common.

Moral development seems nevertheless to continue across the middle age (Bakken & Ellsworth, 1990). Stage 6 has not been empirically established in any samples, even if some cases have been found and intensively studied (see Kohlberg & Higgins, 1984). Consequently, the current scoring system (Colby & al., 1987) does not distinguish Stage 6 from Stage 5 any more. To sum up, these findings indicate that postconventional stages describe moral development exclusively in adulthood.

General prerequisites of moral development are (a) sufficient logical-cognitive development, (b) socio-cognitive development through enlarged role-taking opportunities and (c) the experiences of cognitive-moral conflicts, leading to transforming the current modes of moral reasoning. According to Kohlberg and Higgins (1984), these factors are responsible for moral development up to Stage 4, and can be based on vicarious moral experiences, rather than on personal moral choices. Higher post-secondary education, providing cognitive stimulation and role-taking opportunities, has been found to be related to moral development up to Stage 4 (Nucci & Pascarella, 1987). Indeed, participants in the U.S.

longitudinal sample reached postconventional stages only after completing university education (Kohlberg & Higgins, 1984), whereas some Kibbutz youths without high formal education reached them as well (Snarey, Kohlberg & Reimer, 1984).

Kohlberg and Higgins (1984) analyzed the adulthood development of postconventional cases in the U.S. longitudinal sample with the following conclusions: The shift from conventional to postconventional

reasoning seems to be more radical and difficult than previous ones, because it not only represents more adequate perception of a social system as the previous shifts, but a postulation of principles and ideals, to which the society and self ought to be committed. The transition process is two-fold: At first, moral relativism that differentiates personal and societal moralities emerges, leading to criticism against social reality instead of conforming to it. The transition is complemented by the commitment to self-chosen moral principles for self and society.

Kohlberg and Higgins suggest that achieving postconventional reasoning requires two different types of experiences of personal moral responsibility: (1) responsibility for self in contexts of moral conflicts, and (2) social responsibility, often in work contexts. They point out that job responsibilities for decisions about other people’s welfare appear to consolidate Stage 5 reasoning in adulthood. A job should encourage and require empathic role-taking, stepping into the shoes of those for whom one feels responsible (e.g., patients), instead of strategic role-taking with those in positions of authority, to whom one is accountable or responsible (e.g., superordinates, emphasis original). As examples, two physicians with high job responsibilities achieved Stage 5 smoothly, whereas a lawyer who used strategic role-taking in his work as an attorney, had difficulties to get his potential postconventional reasoning consolidated through his young adulthood. Consequently, different professions seem to provide different opportunities for moral role-taking, even though they were of the same social status and responsibility (Kohlberg & Higgins, 1984.) Lempert (1994) did a longitudinal study of skilled manual workers, and found out that taking responsibility for oneself and others, as well as coping with contradictory explanations, rules and values contributed to the postconventional transition. Moral atmosphere at workplaces appears to be a significant determinant of adult moral development, providing both opportunities of improvement and stagnation.

Interestingly, emerging moral relativism at Stage 4/5 does not inevitably result in the consolidation of Stage 5 reasoning. Indeed, Kohlberg & Higgins report some cases that remained in the phase of moral relativism with the outside-of-society perspective over several adulthood years. What is also striking in Kohlberg & Higgins’s analysis is that responsible moral choices affecting others’ welfare outside work context, in the spheres of family and intimate relationships, were lacking in this young adult male sample. It is an open question whether they would have emerged if women had been included in the sample.

To date, postconventional reasoning has been even more infrequent on actual or real-life dilemmas than on hypothetical dilemmas. This is partly due to the fact that in many studies, participants’ competence does not evidence higher stage reasoning beyond Stage 3/4 even on hypothetical dilemmas (Carpendale &

Krebs, 1992; 1995; Krebs, Denton & al. 1991; Wark & Krebs, 1996, 1997). Indeed, Armon (1998) found that her educationally privileged participants (at Stage 4 on average on hypothetical dilemmas) were able to make higher-stage judgments, but were nonetheless scored ¼ stage lower on their real-life moral conflicts.

Moreover, she found that moral events in societal context elicited higher reasoning than moral events in personal context, suggesting that “face-to-face interpersonal moral conflicts often do not involve the most complex social relations and therefore, may not require the highest level of socio-moral complexity for their resolution” (p. 348).

It has been widely acknowledged that the rarity of postconventional reasoning poses a serious problem for Kohlberg’s theory, especially because he defined morality from the perspective of the higher stages (Rest & al., 1999). The recent Neo-Kohlbergian view has pointed out several flaws in Kohlberg’s conceptualization of postconventional stages that may account for the scarcity of empirical evidence. Firstly, Kohlberg’s view was greatly influenced by Kant’s and Rawls’ moral philosophies which represent deontological moral theories based on certain moral principles. Accordingly, moral agents are assumed to apply their conscious moral principles to the moral dilemmas they encounter. The assumption that deductive logic is the only mode of moral reasoning seems to be erroneous, however. It has been found that specialists in ethics could reach moral agreement on specific cases even if they could not agree on which moral principles they constructed their judgments.

Secondly, postconventional reasoning may include other ideals and principles than Rawlsian and Kantian conceptions of justice.³¹

31Based on Beuchhamp and Childress (1994), Rest et al. (1999) outline a new type of philosophical approach that combines inductive and deductive approach. Members of a community may reflect specific cases and develop consensus over time in open debate. Consequently, some cases become paradigmatic, with which new cases are compared.

Thirdly, the Moral Judgment Interview, based on subjects’ explicit verbal expression, tends to underestimate their understanding, compared with a recognition task, such as Defining Issues Test (DIT). As a conclusion, the Neo-Kohlbergian approach has redefined the criteria of postconventional moral reasoning as follows:

1. The primacy of moral criteria. The person realizes that laws, codes and contracts are all social arrangements that can be set up in a variety of ways. She/he views social norms and conventions as alterable and non-universal. Rights and duties follow from the moral purpose behind the conventions, not from de facto norms, as at the previous Stage 4.

2. Appealing to an ideal. A constructive ideal is offered, by which to transform society.

3. Sharable ideals. Acts or practices based on ideals must be justifiable to those whose participation is expected. Moreover, one’s justifications are open to rational critique, and can be challenged by new experience, by logical analysis, and by evidence.

4. Full reciprocity. Unlike partial reciprocity at Stage 4, full reciprocity acknowledges that social norms and laws themselves can be biased, in favor of some at the expense of others.³²

Emerging rules and principles are again checked against the more settled specific moral cases, and examined for their logical coherence and fit with moral experience. This dialectical process may lead to establishing reflective common morality with sharable moral ideals that are particular for each community.

32While the Neo-Kohlbergians take a critical position against Kohlberg’s definition of the highest stages, they nevertheless see a shift from conventional to postconventional thinking as a critical transformation in modern societies. “The crux of the ideological disputes... does not concern the refinements of modern philosophy...

Rather the ideological division is over fundamentalism versus secularism, orthodoxy over progressivism, and conventional versus postconventional ideology. A case can be made that the broad-gauged distinction we draw between conventional and postconventional is more urgent to understand than the many finer points of modern moral philosophy” (Rest & al., 1999, p. 31.)

What makes the prevalence of postconventional justice reasoning relevant from the viewpoint of care is the Kohlberg et al.’s (1983) claim that the ethics of care and justice are integrated at this level. What concrete forms or modes this integration might take is largely an unexplored issue. Kohlberg, Boyd and Levine (1990) later explicated that the integration happens at Stage 6 (that unfortunately does not exist so much), when sympathetic understanding and the equal consideration of the dignity of all persons takes place. The theorists of care have nevertheless maintained that the postconventional position emphasizes the independence from group loyalties, leading to actual insensitivity to social injustices (e.g., Tronto, 1993).

Another interesting issue is whether the conceptualizations of postconventional stages may involve more care-based moral ideals than has been the case to date. This pertains to the question whether the ethic of care can be transformed into a sharable political idea crossing the boundary between private and public life, as Tronto (1993) in her theorizing envisages.