#zip.tag

Okay first off talking about Kohlberg's stages of moral development which is kinda self explanatory, it's divided into three main stages (preconventional, conventional, and post conventional) and I was gonna talk about how all of them are rules just in different ways.

The preconventional stage is determined by self first and foremost but also authority figures, so stages 1 and 2 are all about reward and punishment in regards to yourself. I'm doing this to get out of punishment or I'm doing this to earn a reward. Reciprocity to serve yourself, so it also means I'm only doing this because I want something from you. It's egoism but not exactly egoism which is where I was planning on bringing up the idea that some parents have over their babies being "manipulative" for crying??? Which as a psych major just freaking boggles my mind. Babies do not have the mental capacity to be manipulative.

At that stage of cognitive and moral development, they only understand taking care of themselves they do not have the capacity to do otherwise bc if children are out here having to take care of others and put others above their own needs humans will literally die off. Ergo children in the preconventional stage of moral development aren't necessarily more or less moral than people in other stages because that is simply the stage they're in. Now if a grown adult were to still be in the preconventional stage then there's problems because adults have the capacity to go beyond that stage and there's no excuse have the same basic moral understanding as toddlers and children.

Moving onto the conventional stage, Kohlberg states that people reach this stage when they reach adolescence which makes sense because this stage is determined by social norms. Stage 3 is all about sticking to the status quo and being "normal" which is the only thing ppl that age are worried about. Stage 4 is all about laws and order, which also makes sense because you start learning and actually needing to worry about that kind of thing when you reach adolescence. As a child your scope is yourself, authority figures in your life and your peers. I didn't have as much to say about this one bc it's pretty self explanatory.

The post conventional stage (AKA the principled level) is where it gets fun because I wanted to talk about how this circles back to being determined by self. It's the abstract stage. The way that I've conceptualized the moral stages in my mind is that the pre-conventional stage is like doing a math problem without understanding the theory behind it; you're just plugging in numbers not really understanding why, just knowing that "this is what you need to do." The conventional stage is where you start learning the theory, "this is why you need to do this thing" and therefore the logical conclusion to that is the post-conventional stage where you understand the rules and understand why you need to follow them; now you can apply it properly and even better--you can learn to think against them.

"I know why I need to do this thing, now I can make my own judgment." I call this the chaotic neutral stage because it is internalizing the rules you spent all the other stages learning about and deciding for yourself whether you subscribe to them or not, and then you can start thinking of moral judgment on a global/universal scale, because you understand it and how it pertains to yourself and your circle (going into moral circle).

Then we segwayed into Heinz' moral dilemma for a quick second to which I wanted to mention the paradox of (Spoiler alert for Heinz' moral dilemma and how it pertains to Kohlberg's theory of moral development) the post-conventional idea for why Heinz should not steal the drug for his wife is that, quote "Others may need the medicine just as badly, and their lives are equally significant" which is a paradox because if the other people's lives are "equally significant" then why should Heinz bow down to them? His wife's life is equally significant. The idea of "others needing it just as badly" and "equally significant" are kind of a paradox in this sense because you're saying that other people deserve it more kind of??

And then we went off topic and talked about Russia vs Ukraine for a bit, which had me thinking of all the annoying ass Americans on tiktok joking about being drafted into WW3 which is just so ironic when I'm sitting in an ethics class having a discussion about a hypothetical situation where my wife needs a drug, meanwhile soldiers on both Russia and Ukraine are having actual real life moral dilemmas fighting for their countries yk? And like, I've been keeping a journal lately just cause I think it's a nice habit to have, and every day I'm talking about what homework I have to do for each class and how boring some of my classes are, meanwhile there are people dying on the other side of the world. Speaks a lot on my privilege living in America.

Then someone talked about the criticisms against Kohlberg's theory which I think they said weren't really criticisms and more so just, further discussion on them?? There was something about Kohlberg's theory being sexist, or at least being different between boys and girls, which then got me thinking about the psych of women class I took last semester where there was discussions about the fact that boys and girls are socialized to have different perspectives when it comes to morality and interacting with others, which is actually like, Gilligan literally talked about it to criticize Kohlberg's theory I just kinda forgot about it because we didn't talk about Kohlberg's theory from a moral/ethics/philosophy perspective we talked about it from a gender perspective.

Anyway Gilligan's theory is that men are socialized to have a justice perspective (more focused on being right and sharing information) while women are socialized to have a care perspective (more focused on making connections with others) which almost directly places men and women in completely different stages of moral development. Men simply aren't socialized as much as women to reach the conventional stage at younger ages. That is of course not saying that men will stay in the preconventional stage or that women are always going to go to the conventional stage (i feel like the people who have kids and believe that they’re “manipulating them” never left the pre conventional stage smfh) it’s just something to think abt when it comes to kohlberg’s theory cause it’s just, added thought you know?? things aren’t always black and white there’s always a lot of confounding variables when it comes to development such as gender, culture, religion, class, race, etc. etc.

We talked abt compassion v empathy for a bit i don’t really have much to say about that and then we started talking more in depth about the moral circle that i mentioned earlier which fits really well into kohlberg’s theory with like the whole your circle of compassion grows and grows beginning from yourself, your family, your peers, your community, etc etc. yk? which like, is weird when you think abt ppl who have more compassion towards animals than other human beings and cool when you think about the fact that you can’t have compassion or think morality for others necessarily without having compassion or understanding morality at a basic principle of self sense.