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An Aesthetic Approach to Moral Development Towards an Alternative to Principle-Based Moral Theories. Jennifer Cole Wright University of Wyoming narvik@uwyo.edu AME 2004 Conference Dana Point, CA. An Account of Moral Excellence.
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An Aesthetic Approach to Moral DevelopmentTowards an Alternative to Principle-Based Moral Theories Jennifer Cole WrightUniversity of Wyomingnarvik@uwyo.edu AME 2004 Conference Dana Point, CA
An Account of Moral Excellence Philosophically speaking, any adequate account of ethics must tell us in what moral excellence consists. Psychologically speaking, any adequate account of moral psychology/moral development must tell us how it is that we achievemoral excellence. Moral excellence is the ability to achieve mature moral judgments and actions. Mature moral judgments and actions are those judgments and actions that are morally appropriate to the situations they are judgments of and actions in response to.
I. Principle-Based Moral Theories • Principle-based moral theories (typically deontological and consequentialist) are those moral theories that locate the maturity of moral judgments and actions in their conformity to a certain specified moral principle(s). • Such conformity can be achieved in one (or both) of two ways: • Moral guidance – moral principles guide us to mature moral judgments and actions • Normative authority – moral principles justify moral judgments and actions as mature • So, for principle-based moral theories, the development of moral maturity is a movement towards conformity (in the form of principled deliberation and/or justification) to moral principles.
II.Problem with Moral Principles • Moral Principles come in two basic forms: • Concrete principles – context-free, simple, inflexible rules that contain specific, unambiguous action guidance (e.g. “Always keep your promise” or “Never lie”) • Abstract principles – abstract, orienting rules that do not contain specific, unambiguous action guidance (e.g. “Always uphold justice” or “Maximize utility”) • Problem: Both types of principles seem to fail to map onto the appropriateness of moral judgment and action in particular situations. That is, they seem to fail to either produce or identify (i.e. justify) mature moral judgments and actions. Why?
Concrete principles are too rigid. • They do not give us the means necessary to adapt our judgments and actions to accommodate the details of particular situations (e.g. “Never lie”). • Abstract principles are too ambiguous. • They do not give us the means necessary to identify what judgments to have or actions to perform in particular situations (e.g. “Maximize utility”). • Conclusion:Moral maturity is not achieved through conformity to moral principles. So then, how is it achieved?
III. Dreyfus’ Account of Expertise • Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus’ model of expertise provides an alternative developmental account of moral maturity. • Their model suggests that principles play only a circumscribed role in moral development. Contra Kohlberg (and principle-based moral theories), principles are not the deliberative end point of maturity. • Moral development is a movement away from, rather than towards, moral judgments and actions guided/justified by principles.
General account of expertise: • Five developmental stages that progress from novice to expert in various skill domains (e.g. chess, martial arts, driving, nursing, and so on). • Principles are introduced early in development as basic rules that identify features recognizable without the benefit of experience • (e.g. chess rule “always exchange if the total value of pieces captured exceeds value of pieces lost”). • Reliance on such rules is gradually replaced with ‘procedural knowledge’ (i.e. know-how) gained through experience. Such knowledge leads to intuitive responsiveness. • Intuitive responsiveness is the hallmark of expertise generally. It enables rapid, automatic, effortless responses to particular environmental contingencies. Importantly, such responsiveness is also reliably appropriate: this is what makes an expert anexpert.
Intuitive responsiveness (or know-how): • must be more than the internalization of the originally externally introduced rules. • rather, it involves the ability to rapidly perceive, identify, understand, and respond to relevant patterns of environmental features encountered in a given domain. • the development of intuitive responsiveness (or know-how) replaces rule-guided behavior. For experts, perceiving and responding appropriately are interconnected. • That is, there are few deliberative pauses between what one perceives and what one does: rather, it is as if they are two aspects of the same activity. • Importantly, this interconnection of perception and action comes without degradation of performance: novices can also act without deliberation, but this will likely lead to failure.
As one expert martial artist relates: There is no choosing. It happens unconsciously, automatically, naturally. There can be no thought, because if there is thought, there is a time of thought and that means a flaw…If you take the time to think ‘I must use this or that technique’ you will be struck while you are thinking.
Some other examples might help. Consider: the professional ski racer who knows precisely how to adjust her posture to bring herself quickly around a steep turn the concert pianist who moves his fingers move skillfully across the keys the master chess player who can play 5-10 second/move games without significant degradation in her performance the Native American scout whose senses are attuned to his environment so that he can detect what manner of man or animal is (or was) present so, too, might the morally mature person come to simply see the moral relevance of particular situations and judge and act accordingly
Two key elements If moral excellence is a skill one can become an expert in, then it must involve the development of two keys elements: • Moral know-how • Moral sensitivity
IV. Dewey’s Account of Moral Character (Know-how) • Know-how in the moral domain develops through the cultivation of moral character. • Dewey argues for the importance of habit for the development of moral character. Defining character as “…the interpenetration of habits”. He writes: …we are given to thinking of a habit as simply a recurrent external mode of action…but habit reaches even more significantly down into the very structure of the self; it signifies a building up and solidifying of certain desires; an increased sensitiveness and responsiveness to certain stimuli, a confirmed or an impaired capacity to attend to and think about certain things. (emphasis added)
The cultivation of habits has an essentially moral significance: it is the process by which dispositions to reliably act in/respond to the world (i.e. character) are formed. Thus, habitual practice is the process by which the link between perception and action is forged. • Habitual practice leads to the development of know-how: the ability to quickly grasp the meaning of particular patterns of environmental features, to adapt spontaneously to often completely novel environmental contingencies, and to respond appropriately.
IV. The Aesthetics of Moral Maturity (Sensitivity) • Moral expertise relies on a developed sensitivity that is similar to an aesthetic sensitivity in the following ways: • Our understanding of the needs and appreciation for the well-being of others and ourselves is akin to an aesthetic appreciation – a “recognition of beauty and ugliness in conduct” (Dewey) in which we feel ourselves attracted or repulsed to, sympathetic or condemning of, the life situations of others. • Iris Murdoch – the primary function of art (and morality) is “unselfing”: • a “distancing” from one’s immediate needs/fears/desires • direct engagement of task • egoless perception • Dewey – aesthetics is not a subject matter, but rather a method. That is, it constitutes a particular way of living, a particular approach to our lived experience.
VI. Developmental Implications • Morality, like aesthetics, is not a subject matter to be taught, but rather it is a method (a way of thinking about, feeling, experiencing, and approaching the world) to be cultivated. • While such cultivation may begin with moral principles, in the end such principles must be set aside. • Dreyfus writes, “Like the training wheels on a child’s first bicycle…rules allow the accumulation of experience, but soon they must be put aside to proceed.”
Children must understand their daily social and personal activities as a constant engagement in moral practice: that is, we need to conceive of morality as a skill that one is continuously practicing and perfecting. • In this sense, moral engagement is a “life practice” that involves: • Quality of Consciousness: Children must be given opportunities to cultivate mindfulness. • There must be opportunity to develop social/emotional acuity, discernment, and conscientious awareness of oneself and one’s manner in relationship to (and with) others. • There must also be opportunities for the practice of “un-selfing”: learning to see things as they are, not as we want them to be.
Direct Feedback: There must be a direct feed-back loop that is initially externally imposed, but becomes internally driven. • By this, I do not mean the internalization of rules, but rather the linking of judgment and action that occurs through the development of know-how (moral character). • Modeling/Mentoring: Children cannot “do as we say, but not as we do”. • Moral development requires the presence of moral models and mentors – and by this, I mean the presence of exemplars (and better yet, communities of exemplars). • More than this, morality requires a cultural, social, and physical environment that is conducive to its development. • Thus, we must ask ourselves the question: Are our lifestyles currently conducive to the cultivation of moral maturity? Do our cultural/social/physical environments reflect back to us the kinds of people we want our children to be and the kinds of lives we want them to live?
VII. Conclusion • In the expertise model of moral development, moral principles take on a new role. The development of moral maturity is the development of a rich capacity for moral engagement that surpasses what any principle based system can articulate. • At best, moral principles are descriptive of moral maturity: they are no longer prescriptive. • Moral principles are analogous to the tips one finds in books on chess when first taking up the game. Such tips are attempts to distill the knowledge possessed by chess masters into a set of basic rules. As helpful as these rules are to the beginner, it would be a mistake to think that the games played by masters are guided by them – explicitly or otherwise.
As Philip Kapleau writes (in the context of Zen Buddhism): Remember, the [principles] are not moral commandments…Rather they reveal how a deeply enlightened, fully perfected person…behaves. Such an individual doesn’t imitate the [principles]; they imitate him.(emphasis added)
