...Joshua Westcott Kohlberg’s Moral Development April 30, 2012 As children’s cognitive abilities mature and expand, so does their ability to reason about moral issues. If we can begin to understand the ways children reason about moral issues, it might help parents and therapists better attune themselves to each child, so as to help each child develop in a positive direction. By attuning to children, the parent or therapist will be better equipped to reason with children at ‘their’ level of development; otherwise, what the adult is trying to communicate will get lost in translation. If we can learn to speak the child’s language, than we can help each child use his or her ‘logic/reasoning’ to effect change in his or her world. Who are the major theorists in the area of moral development? A few of the major theorists in the field of moral development are John Piaget, Lawrence Kohlberg, Elliot Turiel, and Carol Gilligan. Gilligan is a brilliant feminist psychologist who is best known for her 1982 work, “In a Different Voice” (see http://www.amazon.com/In-Different-Voice-Psychological-Development/dp/0674445449/ref=lp_B000APQF3Q_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335926229&sr=1-1). Turiel is best known for developing his ‘domain theory’, which is discussed in his exceptional work, “The Development of Social Knowledge: Morality and Convention” (see http://www.amazon.com/The-Development-Social-Knowledge-Convention/dp/0521273056/ref=lp_B001HD1YF4_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1335926449&sr=1-2)...
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...Should Heinz steal Ethically and legally, he should not steal the potion or drug; he should hold a town meeting placing the man front and center. Then allow him to explain to the people why he can’t accept $2000, which is more than enough money. If the future customers view this man unscrupulous, he will not be able to make even $400 off his potion, and will quickly change his mind. 1. Is it actually right or wrong for him to steal the drug? Why is it right or wrong? It’s wrong to steal; this dates back to biblical times, where thieves lost arms and fingers, no matter the justification. In the Wild West you could be hanged for horse theft, so yes it’s very wrong to steal. Someone had to pay for that product in the first place; it’s unfair for them to inherit a loss. If your creative, there’s always a way get what you need, without having to steal. 2. Does Heinz have a duty or obligation to steal the drug? Why or why not? Heinz can make this a priority, but a duty is a task that is either legal or a moral responsibility, and once again stealing is neither of the two. In terms of an obligation, its not that either. An obligation is when a person is morally or legally bound to a duty or commitment. The words moral and steal do not compliment each other; in life, you have to pick one or the other, to be moral, or be a thief. 3. the drug? Why or why...
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...Moral Issues in Business Chapter Two Normative Theories of Ethics Consequentialist Theories • Egoism - Adam Smith • Egoism is a consequentialist theory. What matters for egoists is the consequences of their actions for themselves. • • Utilitarianism - Bentham and Mill o Utilitarianism is a consequentialist theory. Right and wrong depends on the consequences of one’s actions for everyone who might be affected by them. Jeremy Bentham • Bentham was a hedonist. He believed that happiness was a matter of more pleasure and less pain. • Bentham thought you could assign pleasure points to an action according to the following categories: o Intensity: How intense is the pleasure? o Duration: How long will it last? o Certainty: How sure are you that the pleasure will occur? o Proximity: How soon will the happiness occur? o Fecundity: How much more pleasure will this lead to? o Purity: How much pain will be mixed with this pleasure? o Extent: How many people will experience the pleasure? Quality vs. Quantity o Bentham: Pushpin is as good as poetry. o Mill: It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. o Bentham believed that all pleasures should count equally, but Mill believed that humanity would be better off if the intellectual, moral and aesthetic pleasures were more valued. Principle of Utility o The right action is the one that produces the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, or happiness over unhappiness, for everyone affected by that action. o Animals...
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...The Heinz Dilemma The Heinz Dilemma was created by Lawrence Kohlberg to help identify moral development, that are stories of moral dilemmas about a man named Heinz who was from Europe. (McLeod, 2013)These theories extended Piaget's, John Dewey's, and James Mark Baldwin's research of children's moral development. (Barger, 2000)“These men had emphasized that human beings develop philosophically and psychologically in a progressive fashion.” (Barger, 2000) So with the combination of Piaget's theories and his own dilemma ideas, Kohlberg came up with the Heinz Dilemma. (McLeod, 2013) In the Heinz Dilemma there are six stages of moral behavior and how the individual justifies their behavior. The three stages broken down by two per stage making...
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...02/18/2013 PHL/323 Kohlberg defines moral reasoning to be decisions based on right and wrong. Kohlberg’s studies were founded on moral dilemmas, or theoretical events in which one must make a tough choice. He describes one’s stage of moral thought from the perceptive used to defend one’s situation while confronted with a predicament. Kohlberg believed this to be of greater importance than the actual choice, subsequently the choices one makes in some predicaments are not always clear or undeniably right. Here is an Example of a Dilemma Kohlberg studied. “Heinz Steals the Drug” "In Europe, a woman was near death from a special kind of cancer. There was one drug that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $200 for the radium and charged $2,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick woman's husband, Heinz, went to everyone he knew to borrow the money, but he could only get together about $ 1,000 which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was dying and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said: "No, I discovered the drug and I'm going to make money from it." So Heinz got desperate and broke into the man's store to steal the drug-for his wife. Should the husband have done that? (Kohlberg, 1973)”. Kohlberg...
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...Maura Walsh Honey Frydman September 17, 2014 DSSA100M Kohlberg’s Development Theory In my personal opinion Kohlberg’s theory was well thought out. He believed that people progress in life through a series of stages. Kohlberg’s theory was put into six different stages and classified into three separate levels. Kohlberg’s theory is very accurate due to the fact that all though some kids may be in a more challenging group than the stage they are meant to be in, that gives us a measurement of how maturity can be major factor. Kohlberg’s stages are based on different levels; level one is pre-conventional, stage one is obedience and punishment orientation (how can one avoid punishment), Stage two is self-interest orientation (what’s in it for me), level two is conventional, stage three is interpersonal accord and conformity (social norms), stage four is authority and social order maintaining orientation (law and order morality), level three is post conventional- stage five is social contract orientation, and lastly stage six is universal ethical principles (principled conscience). Kohlberg’s stages are reasons we have morals, you basically go through six stages to become more knowledgeable about life. Stage one is most crucial in growing up. Obedience- kids should be frightened of getting punished, one can have religious morals where they don’t partake in some activities because they are scared “God will send them to hell.” Stage two is dealing with self-interest, in...
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...Kohlberg Hierarchy of Personal Ethical Development Kristen Leek, Steven Baker, Stephanie Berkovic, Nakoma Wells PHL/323 September 8, 2011 Byron Phillips Kohlberg Hierarchy of Personal Ethical Development Kohlberg Hierarchy of Personal Ethical Development Kohlberg’s stages of moral development uses three scenarios, also known as the Heinz dilemma to asses how an individual will react to certain problem or a specific course of action. In level one the pre-conventional morality, there is two stages. Stage one is punishment-obedience orientation. This is the concern for self with this stage. Stage two is instrumental relativist orientation. This is the concern of “what is in it for me?” The second level is conventional morality. Stage three is called the good boy-nice girl orientation. This is the concern of what other people will think or how they are perceived in society. Stage four is the law and order orientation. This is what is right is obeying the laws of society. Level three of Kohlberg’s theory is post-conventional morality. Stage five of level three is social contract orientation. The concern is social utility or public interest, the right action is one that protects the rights of the individual. Stage six is universal ethical principle orientation. The concern is for moral principles; these principles are not concrete moral rules but are universal principles of justice, reciprocity, equality and human dignity. Pre-conventional Morality The book evaluates level...
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...Cognitive Development in Early Childhood Early childhood is not only a period of amazing physical growth, it is also a time of remarkable mental development. Cognitive abilities associated with memory, reasoning, problem-solving and thinking continue to emerge throughout childhood. When it comes to childhood cognitive development, it would be impossible to avoid mentioning the work of psychologist Jean Piaget. After receiving his doctoral degree at age 22, Jean Piaget began a career that would have a profound impact on both psychology and education. Through his work with Alfred Binet, Piaget developed an interest in the intellectual development of children. Based upon his observations, he concluded that children are not less intelligent than adults, they simply think differently. Albert Einstein called Piaget's discovery "so simple only a genius could have thought of it."Piaget created a theory of cognitive development that described the basic stages that children go through as they mentally mature. He believed that children are like "little scientists," actively trying to make sense of the world rather than simply soaking up information passively. Schemas One of the key concepts in Piaget's theory is the use of schemas. According to Piaget,schemas are cognitive frameworks or concepts that help people organize and interpret information. As experiences happen, this new information is used to modify, add to or completely change previously existing schemas. For example, a young...
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...view there are some major problems with these justifications for war. Each and every justification is met with its own singular problem. The defense against the innocent seems like it is justified but there arises two arguments against it. In a war more than just soldiers are killed. Other civilians will be killed and many of the soldiers don’t want to fight, they are just ordered too. That means we are killing innocent civilians and soldiers to protect some innocent. From a utilitarian view we must ask if this the death of the innocent will outweigh the death of the other innocent if we do or don’t go to war. Yet, deontologists would say that killing is bad and that needs to be punished because killing is wrong. So kill people to stop killing. For a pacifist that is just wrong. The other problem from defending the innocent is that violence is key in war and many times over we have been shown that violence is not always the best way. We should try and support people and ideas like Gandhi, to win with non-violence. There is not always a need for full war if we can help these people peacefully. Then there is the problem with the justification of recovery. This can be taken way out of proportion. If you don't believe me just look at fascist Germany in WWII. Hitler wanted the land that was wrongfully taken from them in the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler wanted to take back the Sudetenland and that...
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...Stages of Moral Development According to Kohlberg Stages of Moral Development by Lawrence Kohlberg (1971) I. Pre-conventional Level At this level, the child is responsive to cultural rules and labels of good and bad, right or wrong, but he interprets the labels in terms of either the physical or hedonistic consequences of action (punishment, reward, exchange of favors) or the physical power of those who enunciate the rules and labels. The level is divided into the following three stages: Stage 0: Egocentric judgement. The child makes judgements of good on the basis of what he likes and wants or what helps him, and bad on the basis of what he does not like or what hurts him. He has no concept of rules or of obligations to obey or conform independent of his wish. Stage 1: The punishment and obedience orientation. The physical consequences of action determine its goodness or badness regardless of the human meaning or value of these consequences. Avoidance of punishment and unquestioning deference to power are values in their own right, not in terms of respect for an underlying moral order supported by punishment and authority (the latter is stage 4). Stage 2: The instrumental relativist orientation. Right action consists of what instrumentally satisfies one's own needs and occasionally the needs of others. Human relations are viewed in terms such as those of the market place. Elements of fairness, reciprocity, and equal sharing are present, but they are always...
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...Theories of Ethics Consequentialism (Utilitarianism) Consequentialism sees the rightness or wrongness of an action in terms of the consequences brought about by that action. The most common form of consequentialism is utilitarianism. Utilitarianism holds that one should act so as to do the greatest good for the greatest number. The good as defined by J.S. Mill would be the presence of pleasure and the absence of pain. Utilitarians are concerned with the aggregate happiness of all beings capable of experiencing pleasure or pain including nonhuman animals. They consider the principle of utility to be the act, which produces the greatest balance of good over evil. Utilitarians consider both the happiness-producing and unhappiness-producing consequences of several alternative actions before deciding on one. A nineteenth century philosopher Jeremy Bentham created a checklist called the hedonic calculus. Bentham designed what he termed the hedonic calculus to enable people to measure the overall happiness- or pleasure-producing consequences of actions in terms of their duration, intensity, certainty, propinquity, fecundity, purity, and extent. This tool would not work in today’s society because happiness or pleasure as we know it would be difficult to measure on a numeric scale. There are two forms of utilitarians. Act utilitarians directly apply the principle of utility to each case as it arises. Rule utilitarians apply the principle of utility to general rules of...
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...theories that will be addressed in this paper is Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development, because one believes that moral development of people is related the success of the organization. Kohlberg’s Theory of Moral Development The main concept of Kohlberg’s theory of moral development is that it “extended Piaget’s theory, proposing that moral development is a continual process that occurs throughout the lifespan” (Cherry, n.d.). Indeed, learning never ends, especially when people are trying to adapt to the changing environment of the workforce. Kohlberg’s theory used the Heinz dilemma of the “drug stealing” scenario to see how young children use their moral judgment and reasoning to respond to the dilemma. The dilemma was that a sick woman’s husband had no choice but to steal the drug from the druggist in order to save his wife. The experiment was not about whether the stealing was wrong, but to see how participants use their...
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...| Business Leadership and Human Values Seminar2 CreditsBU 131.601.F5Summer Session 2016Wednesdays 1:30-4:30pm -- June 8 – July 27 Harbor East Room 230 | Instructor Rick Milter, Ph.D. Contact Information Phone Number: 410.234.9422 milter@jhu.edu Office Hours Typically before class session or by appointment. Required Learning Materials This course is a series of thematic conversations about human values and your responsibilities as an emerging/aspiring business leader. There is no traditional textbook, but there is much reading. You are required to read The Moral Compass: Leadership for a Free World, a workbook by Lindsay Thompson available online as a PDF in Course Documents. You will find details about required learning materials in the Bibliography and Theme Briefs sections of the Syllabus. Course Description and Overview This course explores ethical leadership as a framework for enterprise value creation in a complex environment of competing economic and moral claims. Students examine the intrinsic ethical challenges of leadership and the concept of a moral compass as a foundation for responding effectively to the ethical challenges of corporate citizenship and value creation in a competitive global economy. (2 credits) Syllabus Table of Contents Page Topic 2 Bibliography & Learning Resources 6 Calendar, Seminar Structure, Theme Briefs, Content 42 Seminar Preparation Toolkit 48 Learning Objectives, Graded Assignments...
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...Ethical awareness is fundamental to the professional practice of social workers. Their ability and commitment to act ethically is an essential aspect of the quality of the service offered to those who engage with social workers. Respect for human rights and a commitment to promoting social justice are at the core of social work practice throughout the world. Professional ethics concerns matters of right and wrong conduct, good and bad qualities of character and the professional responsibilities attached to relationships in a work context. Ethical issues arise in many facets of our working lives. Ethical dilemma occurs in areas of work with conflicting interests and competing rights, have a role to support, protect and empower people, as well as having statutory duties and other obligations that may be coercive and restrict people’s freedoms, people are constrained by the availability of resources and institutional policies in society and be between one personal to another who may be personal friends. On daily basis, social workers face ethical issues at their places. In fact this vexed issue form core of social work. No social worker can practice effectively and efficiently without upholding these ethical matters in the highest esteem. There are three conditions that must be present for a situation to be considered an ethical dilemma. The first condition occurs in situations when an individual, called the “agent,” must make a decision about which course of action...
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...Case recap A.1. is the market leader in production and sales of steak sauce in the United States, with the leading competitor (Heinz 57) not being in direct competition with them ( they are quite different in taste and appearance, making their marketing about versatility, not direct competition. A.1.’s Senior Brand Manager (Chuck Smith) has a critical choice to make regarding a counter plan for ad placement in a pivotal time frame, against a newly founded branch of a big name brand (Lawry’s). He needs to decide on the best route to take for the sake of the company. Problem Identification Lawry’s (a direct, big name competitor) is launching a new steak sauce product nationally, and is aggressively looking to go head to head with A.1. The “big wigs” over at Lawry’s have spoken to Publix, which is a major grocer in the region, about running an ad in their Memorial Day circular. Publix is large grocery chain based in the south eastern United States and covers five states (Florida, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Tennessee) with over 1000 locations in that region. With the enormous population base in the area (especially Florida, where they have over 750 locations), losing ground to a competitor such as Lawry’s would not be a good thing. Not only is Lawry’s going after a pivotal ad space, they are entering with an extremely low price point. This price point leaves A.1 with some incredibly difficult choices to make. Identifying the Root Problem Components The problem that...
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