Comments on "Gilligan-Kohlberg Controversy and Preliminary Conclusion"

Thinking about the previous post on "Open-Source", I'm intrigued by the possibility that the simple, harmonious, and convenient narrative described on Lawrence Kohlberg's Wikipedia page might be true, at least as regards a "philosophy of open source":

The sequence of stages of moral development thus corresponds to a sequence of progressively more inclusive social circles (family, peers, community, etc.), within which humans seek to operate competently. When those groups function well, oriented by reciprocity and mutual care and respect, growing humans adapt to larger and larger circles of justice, care, and respect. Each stage of moral cognitive development is the realization in conscious thought of the relations of justice, care, and respect exhibited in a wider circle of social relations, including narrower circles within the wider. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg

But Kohlberg's philosophical thinking, if not totally discredited, is at least put in its place -- as perhaps non-so-universal after all -- in a critique by Kakkori and Huttunen, on the "Gilligan-Kohlberg Controversy and Preliminary Conclusion".

In Kohlberg’s research, it was already decided what the highest moral level contains: the autonomic subject, who believes in universal moral principles, who is sure of his argumentation, and who does not change his opinion even if new information comes up. --Kakkori and
Huttunen, in the Encyclopaedia of Educational Philosophy and Theory

As indicated in the title, the primary lens of critique is that advanced by Carol Gilligan.  Gilligan's thinking brings in the theme of an "ethic of care" alongside the "ethic of justice" that is the focus for Kohlberg -- these are more or less "gendered" ethics.  This is --

...not because care is essentially associated with women or part of women’s nature, but because women for a combination of psychological and political reasons voiced relational realities that were otherwise unspoken or dismissed as inconsequential [within typical public discourse]. --  Gilligan, 1995, quoted in Kakkori and Huttunen

K&H point out that this isn't simply intended as a "battle of the sexes", but rather that

Gilligan stresses that the question is not whether women and men are really different or who is better than the other. Her questions are about perception of reality and truth, how we know, how we hear, how we see, and how we speak. -K&H

It may be a bit of a reach to say that this "reality" is the same one connected with the new realism, nevertheless, it does seem connected with the idea of connection, and this, itself, with the phatic turn:

The human being is understood as having myriads of connections and relationships to other people. This is fundamental to the essence of the human being. She is not considered an autonomic subject with separate being and sense of justice. -K&H

These authors describe the predictable criticisms of Gilligan's gendered theory, but these don't seem particularly damning.  More interesting in my view is the dichotomy between "social" and "reality" based considerations.

Like Hegel Gilligan wants also take moral feelings seriously and put much emphasis on the social nature of morality. -K&H

Perhaps the dichotomy can be resolved by taking a wider view -- like Mead's -- on what is "social."

[Contemporary Hegelians Axel] Honneth’s and [Robert] William’s notion of moral maturity refer to the ethical social totality (Sittlichkeit) in which the other person is encountered (faced) in a reciprocal dialogical relationship of recognition. -K&H

Except that he would broaden that to non-"personal" encounters, and that he might emphasize strangeness rather than recognition, this is not so unlike Deleuze.  Er, OK, maybe he flips the Hegelian thing on its head. I'll have to look a bit further here.^1

As a brief non-philosophical comment: It is also important to keep in mind that free/open source software has historically been very male-dominated, much more so than the world of computers and computer programming in general.  Also in Wikipedia editing, and a lot of the history of Western philosophy to boot.  In this, I think, we do see the "proof in the pudding" for Kohlberg.  It may well be that bigger and bigger "networks" of human interaction grow using the internet, and productive work is carried out on, and across, more and larger scales.  However, large scale and wide-spread does not necessarily mean relational.^2

Notes

1. A bit of googling on related ideas and I ended up at No hay banda. Prosthetic memory and identity in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive.

2. Maybe a look at Deleuze & Guattari's "becoming-woman" would be relevant here...