An Interdisciplinary Treatment of Kohlberg

Puka, Bill

doi:10.1086/292356

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…The positive heuristic consists of the “suggestion” to deploy ever more powerful stage models until empirical realities are accounted for. This is certainly evidenced in the cognitive developmental literature by the proliferation of stage models that attempt to account for the complexity of structural development (e.g., Bickhard, 1978; Campbell & Richie, 1983; Flavell, 1972; Levine, 1979; Rest, 1979; see Puka, 1982, for a discussion of alternate stage models in moral judgment research). A historical consideration of this research program reveals not only theoretical revisions via protective belt hypotheses (e.g., Gibbs, 1979; Kohlberg, 1973; Murphy & Gilligan, 1980) but also the extension of stage models into other positive justice domains (e.g., Damon, 1975; Lapsley & Madar, 1983).…”

Section: The Lakatosian Reconstruction Of Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Rationality in psychological research: The good-enough principle.

Serlin¹,

Lapsley²

1985

American Psychologist

218

246

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" This article reexamines a number of methodological and procedural issues raised by Meehl (1967, 1978) that seem to question the rationality of psychological inquiry. The first issue concerns the asymmetry in theory testing between psychology and physics and the resulting paradox that, because the psychological null hypothesis is always false, increases in precision in psychology always lead to weaker tests of a theory, whereas the converse is true in physics. The second issue, related to the first, regards the slow progress observed in psychological research and the seeming unwillingness of social scientists to take seriously the Popperian requirements for intellectual honesty. We propose a good-enough principle to resolve Meehl's methodological paradox and appeal to a more powerful reconstruction of science developed by Lakatos (1978a, 1978b) to account for the actual practice of psychological researchers. From time to time every research discipline must reevaluate its method for generating and certifying knowledge. The actual practice of working scientists in a discipline must continually be subjected to severe criticism and be held accountable to standards of intellectual honesty, standards that are themselves revised in light of critical appraisal (Lakatos, 1978a). If, on a metatheoretical level, scientific methodology cannot be defended on rational grounds, then meta-theory must be reconstructed so as to make science rationally justifiable. The history of science is replete with numerous such reconstructions, from the portrayal of science as being inductive and justification-ist, to the more recent reconstructions favored by (naive and sophisticated) methodological falsifica-tionists, such as Popper (1959), Lakatos (1978a), and Zahar (1973). In the last two decades psychology, too, has been subjected to criticism for its research methodology. Of increasing concern is empirical psychology's use of inferential hypothesis-testing techniques and the way in which the information derived from these procedures is used to help us make decisions about the theories under test (e.g., Bakan, 1966; Lykken, 1968; Rozeboom, 1960). In two penetrating essays, Meehl (1967, 1978) has cogently and effectively faulted the use of the traditional null-hypothesis significance test in psychological research. According to Meehl (1978, p. 817), "the almost universal reliance on merely refuting the null hypothesis as the standard method for corroborating substantive theories [in psychology] is a terrible mistake, is basically unsound, poor scientific strategy, and one of the worst things that ever happened in the history of psychology." He maintained that it leads to a methodological paradox when compared to theory testing in physics. In addition, Meehl (1978) pointed to the apparently slow progress in psychological research and the deleterious effect that null-hypothesis testing has had on the detection of progress in the accumulation of psychological knowledge. The cumulative effect of this criticism is to do nothing less than cal...

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Section: The Lakatosian Reconstruction Of Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

Rationality in psychological research: The good-enough principle.

Serlin¹,

Lapsley²

1985

American Psychologist

218

246

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“…Once real disputes among philosophers are taken seriously, it becomes very difficult to main tain convincingly that cognitive structures are the most significant barriers to mature political reasoning. Puka [1982] has indi cated that Kohlberg now regards conserva tive content as an ideological accompani ment rather than a defining feature of stage 4, and it seems possible to say the same of other ideologies. All of them can then be regarded as expressions of the stage 4 capac ity for systematic thinking.…”

Section: Theoretical Alternativesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Development of Political Reasoning

Simpson¹

1987

Human Development

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This discussion explores a striking correspondence between conservative, liberal, and egalitarian political attitudes and the three upper stages in Kohlberg’s schema of moral development. In the context of cognitive-developmental theory, the correspondence entails that political ideologies can be ranked in order of cognitive adequacy, but analysis of the evidence uncovers only ‘soft’ political stages. The success of Habermas’s alternative attempt to derive the moral stages from stages of interactive competence depends upon viewing competence in terms of the evolution of communicative practices rather than genuine structural development. His reconciliation of broadly Piagetan and broadly Marxist forms of structuralism leaves the former able to account for prepolitical reasoning but ties political argument to a set of alternative institutional forms rather than to a hierarchy of historical stages.

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“…As Bill Puka points out in his defense of Kohlberg, the influence of reasoning on "decision outcomes" is "partial and somewhat indirect"; the relation of reasoning to choice "remains to be uncovered." 12 Denis Krebs and Kathy Denton contend the problem is more serious: in real life, sophisticated moral reasoning may be used to disguise one's actual motivation in order to make action more socially acceptable. 13 The lack of a connection between moral reasoning and action poses a serious problem for Gutmann.…”

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confidence: 99%

Democratic Education and Social Learning Theory

Howell

2005

pesf

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THE ROLE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT IN THETHEORY OF DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION In a passage that anticipates a large contemporary literature about the aims of public education, Amy Gutmann asserts that common schools help children to develop "the capacities for choice among good lives" so they can participate "in collectively shaping their society." State control and the principle of non-repression prevent adults from limiting children's deliberative scope. Though parents and community may legitimately predispose children toward some conceptions of the good life and away from others, they may not "sanction imposition of non-critical consciousness on children." 1

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An Interdisciplinary Treatment of Kohlberg

Cited by 7 publications

References 0 publications

Rationality in psychological research: The good-enough principle.

Rationality in psychological research: The good-enough principle.

The Development of Political Reasoning

Democratic Education and Social Learning Theory

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