The Gilligan-Kohlberg Moral Theory Controversy free essay sample

Feminist ethics explores the fundamental effect of this imbalance on moral philosophy and seeks to rectify it. So the questions we face are: Do women have a distinct moral perspective? How if at all is gender relevant to moral theory? Questions such as these will be answered in this essay. The concept of morality has long been one of intense interest and debate for many disciplines, from ancient philosophy to contemporary psychology. However, it could be questioned the extent to which we have developed in terms of understanding such an abstract entity. Carol Gilligan follows the cognitive developmental models of Lawrence Kohlberg in her argument concerning female morality, yet can her perspective be supported, or does her theoretical model raise broader issues surrounding the explanation of moral thought and behavior? According to Gilligan, the model of a distinct female moral development is in response to the lack of attention paid to women in previous models of moral development, namely Kohlberg. We will write a custom essay sample on The Gilligan-Kohlberg Moral Theory Controversy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I want to begin by comparing two well-known scholars and their debate, Carol Gilligan and Lawrence Kohlberg. My purpose here is to review the Gilligan-Kohlberg controversy and show the relevance of gender diversity in moral theory. I will discuss some of the implicit and explicit philosophical differences between Gilligans and Kohlbergs out-looks and will then illustrate that Gilligan’s claims that women have a distinctive moral voice cannot be fully justified. Lawrence Kohlberg, born in 1927, taught at Harvard University where he taught both education and social psychology. Kohlberg’s stages of moral development are the stages in thinking about right and wrong that everyone goes through growing up. Each stage builds on the one before so you have to go through them in order. There were six stages (three levels): avoiding punishment, self-interest, good boy attitude, law and order morality, social contract, and principle. The first level of moral thinking, â€Å"pre-conventional,† is generally found at the elementary school level. In the first stage of this level, people behave according to socially acceptable norms because they are told to do so by some authority figure (e. g. , parent or teacher). This obedience is compelled by the threat or application of punishment. The second stage of this level is characterized by a view that right behavior means acting in ones own best interests. The second level of moral thinking, â€Å"conventional,† is generally found in society. The first stage of this level (stage 3) is characterized by an attitude, which seeks to do what will gain the approval of others. The second stage is one oriented to abiding by the law and responding to the obligations of duty. The third level of moral thinking, â€Å"post-conventional,† is one that Kohlberg felt is not reached by the majority of adults. Its first stage (stage 5) is an understanding of social mutuality and a genuine interest in the welfare of others. The last stage (stage 6) is based on respect for universal principle and the demands of individual conscience. While Kohlberg always believed in the existence of Stage 6 and had some nominees for it, he could never get enough subjects to define it, much less observe their longitudinal movement to it. Gilligan (â€Å"In a Different Voice) challenges Kohlberg’s â€Å"stage theory† of moral development. Carol Gilligan, born in 1936, received her doctrine then taught at Harvard University, where she became Kohlberg’s research assistant. Gilligan argued that by building his model on a sample of men, Kohlberg had failed to include the perspectives of women, and further, had relegated women to the status of deviants from the norm. According to Gilligan, she thinks that men are characteristically concerned with practical moral matters of justice and that women are more often concerned with the moral matters of care. Gilligan suggested, â€Å"Women spoke a language which was not decodable by Kohlberg’s system. She thought that women were fundamentally unheard in the Kohlberg’s methodology. In 1977 Carol Gilligan challenged Kohlberg’s model in saying that there was sex bias. In conducting interviews for a project with Kohlberg, Gilligan found what she called â€Å"a different voice,† the perspective, voiced mainly by women, that morality was not defined by justice, fairness, or universal rights, as Kohlberg argued. Instead, this perspective described morality based on care, on responsibility to others, on the continuity of interdependent relationships. When one begins with the study of women and derives developmental constructs from their lives, the outline of a moral conception different from that described by Freud, Piaget, or Kohlberg begins to emerge and informs a different description of development. In this conception, the moral problem arises from conflicting responsibilities rather than from competing rights and requires for its resolution a mode of thinking that is contextual and narrative rather than formal and abstract. This conception of morality as concerned with the activity of care centers moral development around the understanding of responsibility and relationships, just as the conception of morality as fairness ties moral development to the understanding of rights and rules (Gilligan, 1982). Gilligan illustrated this view as a morality of care and argued that it was a distinct moral orientation, not just one of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. She believed that this orientation resulted in different reasoning and ways of resolving moral conflict situations. Kohlberg’s response to Gilligan was to recognize the significance of distinguishing the concept of morality, which focuses on special relationships and obligations, but to deny that it was a distinct moral orientation. He saw it as an addition rather than alternative to justice solutions. We believe that Gilligan’s distinction between a morality of care and a morality of justice is a distinction held in the minds of all human beings†¦ However, these two senses of the word moral do not represent two different moral orientations existing at the same level of generality and validity. We see justice as both rational and implying an attitude of empathy. It is for this reason that we make the following proposal: i. e. that there is a dimension along which various moral dilemmas and orientations can be placed. Personal moral dilemmas and orientations of specials obligation, as we have just discussed them, represent one end of this dimension and the standard hypothetical justice dilemmas and justice orientation represent the other end (Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer, 1983). Therefore, Kohlberg expanded his view of morality to include obligations based on special relationships. Gilligan maintained that a primary concern with morality as care often extended beyond ties of family and close friendships. According to Gilligan, the process of defining a moral conflict was crucial to understanding ones moral reasoning (Gilligan, 1982). Reviewing Kohlberg’s methodology, Gilligan critiqued his hypothetical dilemmas presupposed a definition of morality as justice and were biased towards justice-based resolutions. Gilligan, along with other researchers, developed an interview to determine the different types of moral reasoning. The interview is designed to permit an interaction between two people that makes it possible to present as fully as possible how one of them thinks about some important issues†¦ Thus the set of questions put to a person in an interview is designed to allow the person to present his or her thinking and to elaborate the ways between two people. For the interviewer, two things are necessary: (1) to listen, that is, to follow the train of thinking of the person interviewed; and (2) to have – as Piaget suggests – some directing hypothesis to guide the probing (Lyons, 1984). The objective of the interview was to explore the hypothesis that men and women define moral issues differently and use different bases on which they reason them out. Results found showed that Gilligan’s thesis that two distinct moral orientations were significantly related to gender. In both of the studies, the ethics of care predominated in female thinking and the ethics of justice predominated in the male thinking. Most of Gilligan’s work focused on her views of the care – justice distinction. It is an argument that many men and women find very appealing. However, in conducting her hypothesis, she developed a methodological innovation. Since she used open-minded interview questions about real life dilemmas, the participants were able to define morality in the context of their own lives. Because of this methodological approach, Gilligan was able to â€Å"hear† the voices of women and men describing their own experience of moral conflict. These provided the data for her articulation of â€Å"a different voice†. Gilligan’s method is less biased than Kohlberg’s in that it enables people to provide their own moral dilemmas as the basis for examining their reasoning. However, a third argument has come into play. Carol Stack found errors in her findings of Gilligan. Stack argues persuasively for a greater understanding of relative factors in defining gender identity. Her appeal does not contradict Gilligan’s criticism of Kohlberg, but takes it a step further. Gilligan’s theory of women’s moral development has taken root in native soil. It is a powerful and persuasive theory that derives a female model of moral development from the moral reasoning of primarily white, middle-class women in the United States. The model fits the data, and it fits the conceptualizations of many feminist researchers. However as black and third-world feminist researchers have emphasized, gender is a construct shaped by the experience of race, class, culture, caste, and consciousness. Feminist research must contribute another dimension to the construction of feminist theory: it should provide a critical framework for analyzing gender consciousness and a cautionary reminder to those theorists who think that gender construction is the same in all societies (Stack, 1986). With that perspective being revealed, Gilligan now appears to be in the same trap as Kohlberg. Both Gilligan and Kohlberg have major criticisms in their studies conducted. While gathering empirical research, a sample is selected to represent the larger population. How the population is described and how the sample is chosen are important to the conclusions made about the research gatherings. For instance, if Kohlberg’s population norm is â€Å"people like us,† and that is what we believe, then we will relegate people that are â€Å"not like us. Kohlberg’s norm was men, and later on women were taken into account and measured as â€Å"others. † Gilligan’s norms were white, educated, middle-class women. When researchers see themselves as the norm, those who do not fall under that category are different and become the â€Å"other. † In this case, the people that do not categorize under the norm, their voices are not considered important enough t o acknowledge. The words may be physically heard, but the import of them is dismissed as insignificant. Listening to women’s views and trying to tie them into the research model does not mean that all women think in the same way, nor does it mean that all women have been left out. Throughout the research, it indicates within the models, methods, and in our society as a whole, it is hard to understand and translate the experiences. Gilligan argues, in regards to moral reasoning, that those experiences can be heard by listening more carefully to women. On the other hand, listening to men share their experiences are hard to hear also within the context of narrowly defined frameworks of moral development. The lesson is not that all women are caring, but in this development to exclude women’s experience, a type of reasoning and expression has also been excluded which is also an aspect of men’s thinking. Summing up care as a form of moral reasoning does not authorize the idea that all women are the same and engage in caring resolutions. In general, it gives an overall better understanding of the reasoning of people. With that being said, both men and women practice the act of caring. In conclusion, I feel that Gilligan’s claims that women have a distinctive moral voice cannot be fully justified. Gilligan is on the right track when she writes about the dual context of morality and moral maturity. Nevertheless Gilligan is wrong in the respect that she thinks, like Kohlberg, that these matters can be proven by empirical research and data. Men and women across various cultures appear to have the capacity to adopt either the justice or care driven approach to moral dilemmas, yet there does not appear to be a fixed pattern or system of thought. Regardless of whether her theory of female moral development is accurate, Carol Gilligan’s work helped to encourage the field of psychology to include women and girls in studies and theories.