I was born the year after John Dewey delivered in Japan the lecture that became his Transformation in Philosophy. It was 1920, the year of his lectures in China, including "Science and the Moral Life" and "The Need of a Philosophy of Education". This paper will attempt to add to what he said some of what I think he would have said if he had known what another three quarters of a century of scientific inquiry -- in particular, research on human development -- would contribute to his work in philosophy, psychology and education.

The research of the Center for Moral Development and Education at Harvard University, of which I was the first director, was dominated by Lawrence Kohlberg, who once said that his work was only "Dewey warmed over". My first introduction to Dewey was by Hu Shi who in 1942 gave the commencement address at my graduation from Cornell University. His son, my friend and classmate, T.S. Hu and I had just completed our studies in engineering. In those days an education in engineering consisted exclusively of science with no room for philosophy or anything bordering on cultural values. Hu Shi’s respect for Dewey was for a foreign idea.

Dewey though that in some ways the problems of modern societies are alike. In the United States there is deep concern about a loss of traditional virtues, about what appears to be a growing lack of respect for truth on the part of leaders and a growing confusion on the part of many young people about what it is to be a good person.

There, as in other societies, there has been a long running debate about whether material values take precedence over moral obligations, whether science and technology, as well the patterns of thought on which they depend, are opposed to aesthetics and to cultural and spiritual traditions and to the patterns of thought on which they depend. Indeed, the definitions of these terms in authoritative American dictionaries clearly indicate opposition. Aesthetics is defined not only as "pertaining to a sense of the beautiful" but also as "concerned with pure emotion and sensation as opposed to pure intellectuality" while spirituality is defined not only as "pertaining to the spirit as the seat of moral or religious nature" but also as "pertaining to the spirit or soul as distinguished from physical nature".

In this paper I want to question whether the intellectuality on which science and technology depend is necessarily opposed to a sense of the beautiful, and whether intellectuality is necessarily opposed to emotion, to sensation and to spirituality; indeed, whether intellectuality may not join with the spirit in providing the underpinnings of one’s moral or religious nature. This may appear as little more than "Dewey warmed over", but in considering the question of whether science and technology are opposed to spirituality I want to draw upon some post-Dewey research conducted in over 40 societies throughout the world. It is research on traditional values and how they develop the kind of abstract thought upon which science and technology depend.

I will, from time to time, selectively refer to the conclusions of George McLean in his paper "Harmony as a Metaphysics of Freedom". I do so because, while McLean’s conclusions are arrived at philosophically and hermeneutically, they appear to be in accord with the conclusions I cite from research which is guided by the conventions of empirically based scientific thought in which a problem is identified, relevant data are collected, an hypothesis is formulated from these dates, and the hypothesis is systematically tested.

In brief, it appears from this research that the patterns of reasoning associated with scientific thought are, as suspected, different from those associated with traditional belief, though not necessarily at odds with cultural traditions or spirituality. Indeed, for most individuals cultural traditions and spiritual belief provide an assurance of self which helps translate into action decisions of "ought" arrived at by the kind of thought associated with science and technology.

I will consider economic development and the retention of cultural values not as ends in themselves, but as means to greater justice in one’s society, while taking into consideration that, for many people, greater justice in this world is secondary to spiritual concerns. I want also to consider the ways in which the education of a citizen must go beyond the education of a subject. I want to present some evidence and considered opinion in support of my own convictions that:

- the foremost cultural values are justice and compassion, which are also the means to both greater justice and compassion in a society;

- the development of reason and compassion should be the foremost aim of education;

- the dominant determinant of behavior is a natural compulsion to preserve the self, one’s society-shaped but self-established sense of identity; and

- cultural values and the responsibilities they assign are the most important means to self-identity for most members of most societies.

Turning now to one of the more consequential findings of the research: most people in most societies never develop the patterns of thought upon which a modern technological society must depend for its science and for its assurance of justice. The research seems quite clear about this. McLean, in "Harmony", reaches a similar conclusion in saying: "Few can carry out the conceptualization required for the technical dialectics of Platonic or Aristotelian reasoning, but all share an overall sensibility." The interplay between reasoning and sensibility that is suggested by McLean is discussed later in this paper.

The development of scientific patterns of thought is roughly associated with opportunities that are not widely shared in most societies. Development of such thought is associated with higher education that is grounded upon a liberal secondary education, or associated with taking a wide variety of social roles and responsibilities, or with both formal education and varied social responsibility. Modern science and technology require a store of knowledge, but knowledge is not the same as a pattern of thought; rather, an advanced pattern of thought -- "structure of reasoning" is a better term -- involves the ability to manipulate the concepts and categories by which one gives one’s own order and meaning to the knowledge one has accumulated. Such patterns of thought or reasoning have been described in Western literature by Immanuel Kant, J.M. Baldwin, G.H. Mead, and John Dewey among others. They have been researched by Jean Piaget, Vygotsky, and Lawrence Kohlberg, and have been identified with phenomena in the brain in recent work by Gerald Edelman. While widely shared and quite discrete patterns of thought have been identified by this research, no two individuals think alike. The integrating concepts and categories that are constructed by each individual reflect their own idiosyncratic interpretations of received opinion and personal experience. McLean appears to agree in saying,

the imagination, in working toward an integrating unity, is not confined by the necessitating structures of categories and concepts, but ranges freely over the full sweep of reality in all its dimensions to see whether and wherein relatedness and purposiveness or teleology can emerge and the world and our personal social life can achieve its meaning and value.

 

Imagination is thus one’s own construction of what is real or might be. For an individual, only the imagination is real; all else is imagined.

But, as McLean notes above, few develop the conceptualization required for the technical dialectics of Aristotelian reasoning, much less for Kantian principles or for the science required of a technological society. As Socrates might have put it, most people hold rightly to heteronomous traditional values and to received opinions about science. Only a minority develops scientific reasoning; only a few, selectively and autonomously, hold to traditional values not because they are traditional, but because they meet self-interpreted or self-created criteria for the good, the right, or the beautiful.

Socrates might be challenged by cultural traditions which ask: You speak of true knowledge, but what is truth? Our cultural traditions have served us well enough in the past and can be counted upon to serve us well enough in the future. Or, at least, they are a better choice than the uncertain consequences of rapid change.

Socrates might reply:

Is not truth the hypothesis we hold while searching for the next better one? Is not true knowledge developed through the unrelenting test of hypotheses by considered experience? Are all cultural traditions equally good? Can we agree upon criteria for sorting out the good from the marginal and then determine, as best we can, an optimum rate of change toward a modern economy and to conventions, laws, and principles of beauty that are better than we have now, while cherishing the sense of beauty and spirituality that helps to make us what we are as individuals and as a people? Can we assume that the rate of change affects our ability to approach the good and does so in somewhat predictable ways -- that change can be too fast or too slow?

 

I would go along with Socrates.

Some twenty five years ago as Director of a national program of educational reform, one of our smaller Great Society programs, I tried to see how far the scientific methods -- more particularly, the principles of cybernetics -- could be applied in determining the optimum manner and rate of social change in one aspect of our American society. Prior to that I had been a designer and manufacturer of industrial controls which relied upon the principles and mathematics of cybernetics. From a social-cybernetic analysis of what we had attempted in one of these programs of social reform, my conclusion was that, qualitatively, the concepts of resistance, reluctance, impedance, induced counter forces that are proportional to rate of change, inertia, momentum, over-correction, rate of feedback, unstable systems, and the like. These could be helpful in planning and carrying out a program for social change, but, for the most part, they were not quantifiable as in an electro-mechanical control system. I found, however, that any attempt to approach a problem of social change in these terms was quickly lost on politicians, economists and social planners. While intuitively they took some of these factors into account, several of their programs were guilty of over-correction while others could be charged with contributing to social instability.

This was true even in a society where the patterns of reason required for the intended social change probably were held widely enough to support the changes in public opinion necessary for carrying out the program. This would be indicated by the fact that some 80 percent of Americans complete secondary education and about 50 percent receive some form of post-secondary education. Further, the few surveys of reasoning conducted in the United States indicate that almost 80 percent of the population is about equally divided between the pattern of reason characteristic of a traditional society while another 20 percent manifest reasoning based upon the principles of justice on which the Helsinki Accords are founded. These Helsinki trans-cultural patterns of reasoning come pretty close to the presumed intentions of Kant’s categorical imperative wherein the human rights and dignity that one would seek for oneself and one’s family must be accorded to all others regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, sex or nationality.

Where most members of a society hold to traditional or communal patterns of reason, rather than to the patterns that support a civil society, opinions change slowly, except, perhaps, when new conventions are imposed by their leaders. In most societies, fundamental social change requires not only changes in patterns of reason, but also changes in the content of thought or opinion, or of "sensibility" which is defined by Random House and Webster dictionaries as the "capacity to respond to aesthetic and economic stimuli." Whether fundamental social change could best be achieved by manipulation of public opinion or by development of new patterns of though was much debated by Plekhanov and Lenin and others in the journal, Iskra, in Geneva around the turn of the century. Almost ninety years later, when the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe came to reject the Soviet system, Gorbachev attributed the readiness for change to "new ways of thinking" while Havel credited the change to a new sensibility.

Let us now examine briefly the recent research on the development of patterns of reason and on the interplay of reason and sensibility and other components of self-identity as they affect behavior. We shall examine how the highly predictable development of an individual’s sequential patterns of reason can be expected, in combination with the development of reason by others in one’s society, to affect scientific and economic development, as well as the less predictable effect this may have on the retention of cultural values. Here I shall focus particularly on the structural differences between: (1) traditional patterns of reason which, in communal societies, are predominately heteronomous; (2) a largely heteronomous pattern of reason that is closely associated with the necessary condition for maintaining civil society; and (3) the pattern of thought, largely autonomous, that is closely associated with adherence to principles of justice that foster respect for human rights, equal opportunity, and human dignity within and between societies. In this regard I shall follow especially Kohlberg’s research which focused on the development of reasoning about justice and led him to agree with Socrates that:

(1) virtue is ultimately one, not many, and is the same ideal regardless of climate or culture;

(2) the name of this ideal form is justice;

(3) not only is the good one, but virtue is knowledge of the good: He who knows the good chooses the good; and

(4) the kind of knowledge of the good which is virtue is philosophical knowledge or intuition of the ideal form of the good, not correct opinion or the acceptance of conventional beliefs.

David Hume did not agree that he who knows the good chooses the good, but thought that at least one cannot be counted upon to act upon that choice. For Hume, virtuous action was more occasioned by sympathy and hence was a higher virtue.

Both appear to be correct; surely justice is the first virtue of a society while love or sympathy may be the first virtue of an individual. But, for a society to be virtuous through justice, a critical number of its members must have highly developed ideal forms of the good which can be translated into principles of justice and, in turn, into civil laws. The laws of a society, if founded on justice and fairly administered, will then do much to establish the correct opinion or conventional beliefs which, along with sympathy and compassion, create a virtuous citizenry.

I would like later to address the frequently-heard objection that these concepts of justice as conceived by Socrates, Kant and John Rawls are too often used to condone the imposition on other societies of Western values which may be in conflict with cultural traditions that accord different rights and responsibilities to men and women, to believers and non-believers, or to persons of different statuses of other kinds in their present life in this world.

The research here has been quite rigorous. It was conducted with safeguards against cultural bias and with well-regarded tests of reliability and validity. It has been subjected to several critical reviews and to Lakatos-type analyses that indicate that the theories derived from the research findings are increasingly useful in understanding human development and, consequently, the prospects for societal development.

Four or five distinctive patterns of reasoning about justice are manifested by individuals in every society, from the largely undeveloped to the most advanced. But the content of thought is not the same: knowledge, beliefs, and opinions vary widely between and within societies.

Each individual in every society starts as a child with the same pattern of reasoning and then, through quite idiosyncratic interpretations of education and other forms of experience, constructs for himself or herself several discrete patterns of reasoning, one after another. Each individual develops them in the same sequence, without skipping a pattern or without going back. But there is no assurance of progress unless, through education as well as experience, an existing pattern of reasoning cannot accommodate new and conflicting information and, as a consequence, stimulates the development of a more adequate pattern of reasoning. Advanced societies tend to provide education as well as roles and responsibilities that require abstract mental operations. It is in these societies, particularly in the professions, that research finds individuals capable of the more advanced patterns of reasoning.

Development of a capacity to apply complex mental operations in the field of science, technology and administration in a modern society does not assure a comparable capacity or inclination to apply these structures of reasoning to issues of justice, whether within a family, society, or between societies. Nor does a capacity for advanced reasoning have much to do with sensibility, love or compassion, or with self-assurance to act on one’s capacity for reason, love or compassion. In each longitudinal study that gathered data of this kind, an individual first developed a capacity to apply complex mental operations in the physical domain; only later, and sometimes not at all, did one develop a capacity to apply this reasoning to issues of justice.

Kohlberg’s longitudinal studies indicate that there is a universal human tendency to progress in an invariant sequence through these well-defined stages of reasoning about what is right and just. This begins in childhood with a first stage where "right makes right"; it progresses to a second stage where justice is equal exchange, good for good, bad for bad; then it advances to a third where what is right is what the traditions and conventions of the group to which one belongs hold to be right. Most well-educated people who have had complex responsibilities in a modern society will progress to a fourth stage that can be thought of as civic reasoning based upon an implied social contract to uphold the laws of one’s country. This, in effect, is the right thinking upon which the maintenance of a democracy depends. A small part of a society--generally not more than 20 percent of the citizenry in an advanced society and much fewer in a primitive society--will respect laws that foster a stable, productive society, but will give primary allegiance to the principles of justice upon which most societies ostensibly are based. It is these few who hold to the universalizable principles of justice upon which democracy is founded.

Good accounts of the level of abstract reasoning required for a true knowledge of democracy are provided in Jean Piaget’s The Growth of Logic in the Child, and in his The Early Growth of Logic in the Child. But while the higher levels of abstract reasoning may be necessary for founding a representative government, they are not necessary for its maintenance. To the degree that a nation’s laws represent "right thinking" about principles of justice expressed in a nation’s constitution, and there is general adherence to these laws, a representative democracy can be maintained.

It cannot be emphasized enough that in this stage-by-stage development of reason one’s stock of thoughts and experiences is not supplanted, but merely reorganized; one’s cultural traditions are not replaced. One’s sense of identity still depends primarily upon one’s roots, even though a broader sense of identity is formed as a broader concept of justice is developed.

From related, but less rigorous research, it appears that:

- cultural values and the traditions that support them, if learned when young, persist to a greater or lesser degree throughout the lives of most people in every society; and

- cultural values remain part of a person’s identity and, generally, provide a part of the self-assurance needed to translate judgement to action.

The second part of this paper will draw upon these findings for implications for the kind of education that will promote science and technology as well as economic and social development, while still retaining cultural values. In concluding, it will note some implications that recent research might have for a philosophical justification both of scientific and technological development and for cherishing cultural values. In this there is a concern is to seek harmony between pure and practical reason. This will conclude with an effort to understand why so few modern societies can be counted upon to uphold their best judgements of justice or their traditions or virtue.

The studies that bear most directly on whether scientific method and spiritual values are in conflict have been conducted from two perspectives or strands: research in mental operations and research in brain functions. Both strands are part of an expanding science of the nature of reason.

For centuries the disparate claims of material reason and moral authority were resolved by one or another doctrine of the two-fold nature of truth. The realm of ends and values was revealed by God and apprehended by faith; the realm of nature was revealed by knowledge and apprehended by reason. Kant retained the notion of moral authority as separate from nature, but substituted for revelation the idea of faith grounded upon practical reason. He was confident that "If the kingdoms of science and righteousness now here touch, there can be no strife between them." But there has been strife between the kingdoms, and within them, ever since. Conflicting understandings of revelations and conflicting faiths, derived from the underdeveloped practical reason of most people in most societies, have been the cause of strife within and between nation.

The mitigation of strife and the enhancement of harmony between the scientific method of pure reason and the more traditional methods of practical reason seems best achieved not through exclusion, but by a combination of the two methods. In this, traditions are valued to the degree that they correspond to the practical reason of love, sympathy and compassion and the goals of technological progress are valued only to the degree that they are consistent with the pure reason of justice.

There remains a dualism that is both within and between selves, and between individuals at different stages of moral development. For, as noted earlier, only a few individuals, even in highly developed societies are capable of making judgements in accord with pure reason as it is defined by Kant -- or true knowledge as described by Socrates, or autonomous reasoning as Dewey defines it, or principled judgements in Kohlberg’s terms. Most people in most societies make moral judgements heteronomously according to normative moral codes based upon conventions that are associated with commonly held precepts or beliefs.

But this is not to agree with Kant that science stands apart from spirituality. Pure scientific reason, at the full extent of its development, encounters the mystery of creator and a grand design which can only be addressed through faith. It is a faith in understandings yet to be revealed or discovered. In this sense, there is no difference between scientific and spiritual thought, only a difference when understanding of one’s self and the cosmos and of a measure of harmony between them becomes a hypothesis of faith beyond one’s self.

Moreover, there never was a dualism and this persists today. No one has ever held to a neat separation between faith of some kind and considered judgment based upon material evidence. The most scrupulous scientist indulges in food fads and health nostrums, has undue faith in the local football team or current psychiatrist. On the basis of scattered evidence, it would seem that most proponents of Cartesian or Kantian dualism partly believed it on faith, and partly concluded on the basis of ample evidence that dualism helped them get published and keep their jobs. The human brain has a useful capacity to draw upon concepts and patterns of thought that are useful in maintaining the self. Self-maintenance surpasses reason, pure and practical.

Research of recent years puts the focus not on how we ought to think, but on how we do so: on how individuals in all societies actually do develop reason and, sometimes, righteousness in their journey from infancy to infirmity. The Center for Moral Development and Education at Harvard University was directed toward research on how individuals develop moral reasoning, but also toward education that would foster the assimilation of moral precepts, the accommodation of more embracing moral concepts, the development of more adequate structures of moral reasoning, and the qualities of sympathy and compassion that would both increase attention to issues of justice and encourage one to go beyond justice to act more often out of love or sympathy.

William P. Alston, in his "Moral Attitudes and Moral Judgment" (Nous, 1968, 2, no. 1, 1-23) suggests that the highest stage of moral reasoning that one can manifest parallels "the highest mode of conceptualization that one has thoroughly mastered to date" -- a suggestion consistent with Piaget’s thinking and Kohlberg’s as well. Kohlberg’s research was directed largely to identifying discrete mental patterns of moral reasoning which, unless the dualism of Descartes can be resurrected, must be associated with a phenomenon of the brain whereby an individual constructs concepts and categories. Kant anticipated something of the sort. He used, as an example, the concept of "house" which embraces thousands of quite disparate structures. Gerald Edleman, in Neural Darwinism, reports on brain research that gets at how such concepts are constructed and drawn upon, e.g., how a pigeon constructs the concept of a "tree" so as to distinguish a wide variety of trees from other tree-shaped objects. The research helps to support earlier hypotheses about how an individual constructs concepts of objects and of justice and, if these hypotheses are further confirmed, how to apply these conclusions to programs of education.

Here then is a sampling of conclusions from recent research as they bear on the issue of how a society can develop economically and technologically while retaining cultural values:

- There is no dualism in which pure reason or the scientific method is appropriate to scientific, technological and economic development, while practical reason, tradition and transcendent belief are appropriate to moral development.

- In the process of an individual’s development of higher concepts, both in scientific and moral reasoning, there is a succession of transitions that lead from predominately heteronomous belief toward predominately autonomous judgement, although, for want of formal education and experience with various roles and responsibilities, most individuals in most societies do not reach the stages of reasoning required for creative scientific work or for principled moral judgement.

- An individual first develops the concepts required for advanced scientific thought and later, if at all, develops a capacity for advanced moral judgment.

- An individual’s ability to handle higher order concepts does not give assurance that this ability will be exercised. Most jobs in all societies do not require higher order scientific concepts and most issues of justice inherent in everyday situations are not addressed by one’s highest capacity for moral judgment, but are resolved by habit, convention or emotion.

- An individual’s capacity for higher order moral reasoning tends somewhat to correspond to higher order moral behavior. But whether one attends to moral issues, then exercises the highest stage of moral judgement of which one is capable, and then acts on that judgement is much affected by a number of factors. These include traits of personality, judgements of one’s responsibility and ability to act, and the perceived constraints upon one’s action, including those of other conflicting responsibilities. Most individuals -- saints excepted -- intuitively abide by the adage that "ought implies can" and do not consider themselves obliged to undertake moral action they cannot fulfill, particularly if it would not be in accord with an emotional preference.

- Most people in most societies most of the time behave virtuously not so much because of their capacity for moral reasoning, but because of habit or convention or religious precepts or out of self-respect. But if David Hume is right, it is mostly because of benevolence, love, sympathy, or compassion. Often these engender behavior that does not stop at justice, but goes beyond it to supererogation.

- Most people in most societies do not behave virtuously much of the time and the reasons they do not do so are mostly the inverse of why they do. It may be that they are insufficiently aware of moral traditions or religious precepts, but it is more likely that they have an underdeveloped capacity for moral judgement and, still more likely, underdeveloped sympathy and compassion.

It appears from all this that education for good people who will take their share of responsibility for a good society must embrace a dualism that is symbiotic rather than dichotomous, a dualism in which each of two methods has its season and its reason:

- the methods of science are drawn upon for their part in higher order reason; while

- the methods of tradition, culture, and religion are drawn upon for their part in development of higher order character.