Doris's (Reference Doris2015b) book provides the groundwork for a constructive solution to an important challenge to traditional moral philosophy. The central problem, which Doris raises here and in his earlier work (e.g., Doris Reference Doris2002), is that we are generally ignorant of the conditions that influence our actions. We assume that our reflection and reason makes decisions, but that's not how it works. To support this claim, Doris draws on social psychology research (such as the Obedience to Authority experiment, e.g., Milgram Reference Milgram1974). Studies like Milgram's demonstrate that not only do people act in ways that we do not expect (e.g., a majority will choose to shock a protesting research confederate to the point of unconsciousness), but also that small and seemingly morally irrelevant variations in situations (e.g., how far away from the experimental subject the formerly mentioned confederate is sitting) are related to morally relevant variations in outcomes.
Understanding how small situational differences lead to big consequences would seem to require some kind of theory of human nature, but the classic social psychology research does not provide one (e.g., Sarason et al. Reference Sarason, Smith and Diener1975). Turning elsewhere in psychology, one way to understand how small changes produce big results is to explain contemporaneous human actions through reference to the past, whether ancestral (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990) or developmental (e.g., Carpendale et al. Reference Carpendale, Hammond, Atwood, Lerner and Benson2013). Maybe we get scared of snakes because this helped us survive in the hunter-gatherer era, or perhaps static illusions fool us because of the way we have developed our perceptual abilities in conditions of motion. That said, I know of no evolutionary or developmental account of Milgram, nor am I going to provide one here.
Instead, I'm going to focus on a particular brand of developmental theory in the remainder of my commentary, and mainly focus on Doris's (Reference Doris2015b) definition of reflectivism as the idea that “the exercise of human agency requires accurate reflection” (p. x). I am going to argue that drawing on developmental theory allows us to integrate aspects of reflectivism and anti-reflectivism, in allowing an important role for both accuracy and error in human action. When we contrast reflectivism and anti-reflectivism, we could see these as utterly opposed. But another way is to see these as two sides of the same coin, or as properties emerging out of the same system. Shadow and light emerge from illumination. Sickness and health are the properties of the state of living systems. Although anti-reflectivism can logically be opposed to reflectivism, nevertheless in a developmental psychology approach, where reflection emerges out of action, these could be integrated. This somewhat Hegelian way of doing things hints at the organismic worldviews that motivate many developmental theories (Overton Reference Overton and Lerner2006).
Doris (Reference Doris2015b) leaves developmental psychology largely untapped, perhaps because he wants more than mere “causal” agency, i.e., the type of agency that explains organisms moving around in the world (p. 40). However, there are developmental theories that attempt to connect causal agency to more robust conceptions of moral agency (see Sokol et al. Reference Sokol, Hammond, Kuebli, Sweetman, Overton and Molenaar2015 for a review). The most elaborate of these accounts, with all its warts, faults, and difficulties, is the work of Jean Piaget (e.g., Chapman Reference Chapman1988; Piaget Reference Piaget and Gabain.1932/1965; 1963/Reference Piaget and Cook1936; Reference Piaget1974/1976). A central feature of Piaget's theory is that intelligence is organized action. From a Piagetian perspective, both the six-month-old baby struggling to bring a heavy toy to her mouth and the teenager trying to understand what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, are exercising intelligence. Where teens differ is in their capacity for reflection. Yet despite the presence of reflection and many other qualitative and developmental differences between the teen and baby, there are common processes in their intelligence, of disequilibrium of their earlier assimilation of the world, and attempts to accommodate to their new circumstances (Chapman Reference Chapman1988).
Piaget (Reference Piaget1974/1976) provides a nice example of the complexity of reflection in a study where he asked children and adults to crawl, and then to reflect on and model the process of crawling (i.e., reconstruct the process of crawling). Needless to say, no one had a problem crawling. But when asked to represent crawling, things got messy. Some did this accurately, reflecting that crawling occurs with an “X” pattern, front limb, contralateral back limb, and so on. Others modeled crawling with a “Z” pattern (front limb, other front limb, then back limbs) or an “N” pattern (e.g., left front, left back, then right front etc.). It got messier. When those who had modeled crawling incorrectly were asked to crawl again, some subsequently got it right (i.e., crawled with an X pattern, and then accurately reflected that crawling uses an X pattern). Others, especially young children, demonstrated a kind of parallelism (i.e., continued to crawl one way and model crawling another). And still others reorganized their crawling to fit their previously incorrect model of crawling (e.g., began crawling in an N pattern).
What does this example show? To me, it's not clear that even the X pattern is such a great model of crawling. It gets the limb order right, but says nothing about muscles, back posture, and so on. A type of self-ignorant action remains a primary component of how we get about in the world, a conception with which I think Doris could concur. A lot of the time, our reflection captures only part of what's going on. Piaget emphasized that initial reflection most often captured the periphery, such as limb order, rather than the central processes (Hammond Reference Hammond2014). The relation between even these partial models and our actions is complex. Sometimes, as Doris emphasizes, these just seem to run parallel to each other. But, other times we might eventually get it right(er). But then, even an incorrect reflection can influence our actions.
I think this last point is the most interesting one. In some cases our reflections can shape our actions, even when these reflections are inaccurate representations of the state of the world. And my subsequently reorganized actions may create a world that more closely resembles what was in error. To some extent, having a reflective conception of myself as a moral person might actually make me one, as I talk politely, and open doors for others. But that conception doesn't do so well when I encounter a Milgram-type scenario. With my understanding in disequilibrium, and a lot of Milgram's (Reference Milgram1974) subjects were in such a state, what happens next? There is an interesting dynamic of reflecting, acting, getting things wrong, detecting our mistakes, overlooking them, ignoring them, trying to change, and so on.
In fact, just this very type of question has motivated a great deal of research in moral developmental psychology. Just as Milgram (Reference Milgram1974) sought to understand Nazi Germany, so too did figures like Lawrence Kohlberg, who questioned why some people obeyed, and others resisted, and why people change over their life spans (see e.g., Rutland & Killen Reference Rutland and Killen2015; Turiel Reference Turiel2008). I will admit, however, that developmental theories such as Kohlberg's have often fallen back on the very type unproblematic reflectivism that Doris aptly criticizes (see Carpendale Reference Carpendale2000). The overall point is that this brand of developmental account can problematize reflection as a difficult process (e.g., Campbell & Bickhard Reference Campbell and Bickhard1986) even if they sometime fail to do so.
On the other hand, if reflection were just some kind epiphenomena, which is a position held in at least some conceptions of moral psychology (e.g., Haidt & Joseph Reference Haidt and Joseph2004), why bother? Why evolve and develop some system of reflection if you have some other system, whether a lower-order emotional processing system, or an evolved modular system, that gets you around in the world? Piaget's system posits reflection as a form of perspective taking, of integrating the dynamic and changing world and people around you (Bickhard Reference Bickhard2016). Piaget was adamant that reflection was not the proverbial light that illuminates the dark places of the unconscious, or in his terms, action schemes (Piaget Reference Piaget1974/1976). Reflection is a construction, one that it is invariably incomplete (which is to say always partially ignorant, and wrong), but can also be partially right. That last bit means that although the teenager is unlikely to understand the complex set of factors that lead to what is happening in Ferguson (see e.g., Jones et al. Reference Jones, Harris and Tate2015; Tate Reference Tate2016), her reflection, through her own experiences, talking with friends, through social media, might be very different, and in many ways more accurate, than my mine or Doris's. And perhaps through conversation and perspective taking, all of us might come away with a somewhat more accurate perspective.
My main argument here has been centered on the process of reflection, although I've hinted at how a developmental account support valuation, collaboration, and pluralism. One of Piaget's big sociological contributions was to argue that moral development arises not because of authority or obedience, as Durkheim would have it, but because of mutual respect and collaboration (Carpendale Reference Carpendale, Müller, Carpendale and Smith2009; Piaget Reference Piaget and Gabain.1932/1965; Vaish & Tomasello Reference Vaish, Tomasello, Killen and Smetana2014). To the extent that the Piagetian tradition is developmental, it also incorporates a type of pluralism. We don't judge the toddler in the same way as we judge the teenager.
I'll close by drawing the same issue that Doris raises at the end of his book, that of North America's Indigenous peoples and the personal impact of extrinsic conditions. Doris discusses the United States' Indigenous history, largely in the past tense, remarking how the destruction of extrinsic aspects of Indigenous culture destroyed Indigenous identity, even if people persist. If Canada's history with Indigenous people has been slightly less bloody, it is almost equally awful, relying on residential school systems and an Indian Act to “de-Indianize” Canada's Native population, resulting in a “cultural genocide” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015) alongside death through brutality and disease.
Back in the present, suicide rates among Indigenous youth in Canada are extremely high, frequently described as an epidemic. Research by developmental psychologists Michael Chandler, Chris Lalonde and colleagues explore the connection between extrinsic factors and questions of identity and agency (e.g., Chandler et al. Reference Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol and Hallett2003). Their research shows that as Indigenous communities regain governance of institutions such as fire-fighting, health, language, and policing, which are called markers of cultural continuity, suicide rates tend to go down, in some cases to much lower levels than in the European Canadian population. These markers of cultural continuity are extrinsic factors but also support a process of building back a sense of narrative, identity, and agency as youth begin to reflect on their future and their past.
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Doris's (Reference Doris2015b) book provides the groundwork for a constructive solution to an important challenge to traditional moral philosophy. The central problem, which Doris raises here and in his earlier work (e.g., Doris Reference Doris2002), is that we are generally ignorant of the conditions that influence our actions. We assume that our reflection and reason makes decisions, but that's not how it works. To support this claim, Doris draws on social psychology research (such as the Obedience to Authority experiment, e.g., Milgram Reference Milgram1974). Studies like Milgram's demonstrate that not only do people act in ways that we do not expect (e.g., a majority will choose to shock a protesting research confederate to the point of unconsciousness), but also that small and seemingly morally irrelevant variations in situations (e.g., how far away from the experimental subject the formerly mentioned confederate is sitting) are related to morally relevant variations in outcomes.
Understanding how small situational differences lead to big consequences would seem to require some kind of theory of human nature, but the classic social psychology research does not provide one (e.g., Sarason et al. Reference Sarason, Smith and Diener1975). Turning elsewhere in psychology, one way to understand how small changes produce big results is to explain contemporaneous human actions through reference to the past, whether ancestral (see, e.g., Tooby & Cosmides Reference Tooby and Cosmides1990) or developmental (e.g., Carpendale et al. Reference Carpendale, Hammond, Atwood, Lerner and Benson2013). Maybe we get scared of snakes because this helped us survive in the hunter-gatherer era, or perhaps static illusions fool us because of the way we have developed our perceptual abilities in conditions of motion. That said, I know of no evolutionary or developmental account of Milgram, nor am I going to provide one here.
Instead, I'm going to focus on a particular brand of developmental theory in the remainder of my commentary, and mainly focus on Doris's (Reference Doris2015b) definition of reflectivism as the idea that “the exercise of human agency requires accurate reflection” (p. x). I am going to argue that drawing on developmental theory allows us to integrate aspects of reflectivism and anti-reflectivism, in allowing an important role for both accuracy and error in human action. When we contrast reflectivism and anti-reflectivism, we could see these as utterly opposed. But another way is to see these as two sides of the same coin, or as properties emerging out of the same system. Shadow and light emerge from illumination. Sickness and health are the properties of the state of living systems. Although anti-reflectivism can logically be opposed to reflectivism, nevertheless in a developmental psychology approach, where reflection emerges out of action, these could be integrated. This somewhat Hegelian way of doing things hints at the organismic worldviews that motivate many developmental theories (Overton Reference Overton and Lerner2006).
Doris (Reference Doris2015b) leaves developmental psychology largely untapped, perhaps because he wants more than mere “causal” agency, i.e., the type of agency that explains organisms moving around in the world (p. 40). However, there are developmental theories that attempt to connect causal agency to more robust conceptions of moral agency (see Sokol et al. Reference Sokol, Hammond, Kuebli, Sweetman, Overton and Molenaar2015 for a review). The most elaborate of these accounts, with all its warts, faults, and difficulties, is the work of Jean Piaget (e.g., Chapman Reference Chapman1988; Piaget Reference Piaget and Gabain.1932/1965; 1963/Reference Piaget and Cook1936; Reference Piaget1974/1976). A central feature of Piaget's theory is that intelligence is organized action. From a Piagetian perspective, both the six-month-old baby struggling to bring a heavy toy to her mouth and the teenager trying to understand what happened to Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, are exercising intelligence. Where teens differ is in their capacity for reflection. Yet despite the presence of reflection and many other qualitative and developmental differences between the teen and baby, there are common processes in their intelligence, of disequilibrium of their earlier assimilation of the world, and attempts to accommodate to their new circumstances (Chapman Reference Chapman1988).
Piaget (Reference Piaget1974/1976) provides a nice example of the complexity of reflection in a study where he asked children and adults to crawl, and then to reflect on and model the process of crawling (i.e., reconstruct the process of crawling). Needless to say, no one had a problem crawling. But when asked to represent crawling, things got messy. Some did this accurately, reflecting that crawling occurs with an “X” pattern, front limb, contralateral back limb, and so on. Others modeled crawling with a “Z” pattern (front limb, other front limb, then back limbs) or an “N” pattern (e.g., left front, left back, then right front etc.). It got messier. When those who had modeled crawling incorrectly were asked to crawl again, some subsequently got it right (i.e., crawled with an X pattern, and then accurately reflected that crawling uses an X pattern). Others, especially young children, demonstrated a kind of parallelism (i.e., continued to crawl one way and model crawling another). And still others reorganized their crawling to fit their previously incorrect model of crawling (e.g., began crawling in an N pattern).
What does this example show? To me, it's not clear that even the X pattern is such a great model of crawling. It gets the limb order right, but says nothing about muscles, back posture, and so on. A type of self-ignorant action remains a primary component of how we get about in the world, a conception with which I think Doris could concur. A lot of the time, our reflection captures only part of what's going on. Piaget emphasized that initial reflection most often captured the periphery, such as limb order, rather than the central processes (Hammond Reference Hammond2014). The relation between even these partial models and our actions is complex. Sometimes, as Doris emphasizes, these just seem to run parallel to each other. But, other times we might eventually get it right(er). But then, even an incorrect reflection can influence our actions.
I think this last point is the most interesting one. In some cases our reflections can shape our actions, even when these reflections are inaccurate representations of the state of the world. And my subsequently reorganized actions may create a world that more closely resembles what was in error. To some extent, having a reflective conception of myself as a moral person might actually make me one, as I talk politely, and open doors for others. But that conception doesn't do so well when I encounter a Milgram-type scenario. With my understanding in disequilibrium, and a lot of Milgram's (Reference Milgram1974) subjects were in such a state, what happens next? There is an interesting dynamic of reflecting, acting, getting things wrong, detecting our mistakes, overlooking them, ignoring them, trying to change, and so on.
In fact, just this very type of question has motivated a great deal of research in moral developmental psychology. Just as Milgram (Reference Milgram1974) sought to understand Nazi Germany, so too did figures like Lawrence Kohlberg, who questioned why some people obeyed, and others resisted, and why people change over their life spans (see e.g., Rutland & Killen Reference Rutland and Killen2015; Turiel Reference Turiel2008). I will admit, however, that developmental theories such as Kohlberg's have often fallen back on the very type unproblematic reflectivism that Doris aptly criticizes (see Carpendale Reference Carpendale2000). The overall point is that this brand of developmental account can problematize reflection as a difficult process (e.g., Campbell & Bickhard Reference Campbell and Bickhard1986) even if they sometime fail to do so.
On the other hand, if reflection were just some kind epiphenomena, which is a position held in at least some conceptions of moral psychology (e.g., Haidt & Joseph Reference Haidt and Joseph2004), why bother? Why evolve and develop some system of reflection if you have some other system, whether a lower-order emotional processing system, or an evolved modular system, that gets you around in the world? Piaget's system posits reflection as a form of perspective taking, of integrating the dynamic and changing world and people around you (Bickhard Reference Bickhard2016). Piaget was adamant that reflection was not the proverbial light that illuminates the dark places of the unconscious, or in his terms, action schemes (Piaget Reference Piaget1974/1976). Reflection is a construction, one that it is invariably incomplete (which is to say always partially ignorant, and wrong), but can also be partially right. That last bit means that although the teenager is unlikely to understand the complex set of factors that lead to what is happening in Ferguson (see e.g., Jones et al. Reference Jones, Harris and Tate2015; Tate Reference Tate2016), her reflection, through her own experiences, talking with friends, through social media, might be very different, and in many ways more accurate, than my mine or Doris's. And perhaps through conversation and perspective taking, all of us might come away with a somewhat more accurate perspective.
My main argument here has been centered on the process of reflection, although I've hinted at how a developmental account support valuation, collaboration, and pluralism. One of Piaget's big sociological contributions was to argue that moral development arises not because of authority or obedience, as Durkheim would have it, but because of mutual respect and collaboration (Carpendale Reference Carpendale, Müller, Carpendale and Smith2009; Piaget Reference Piaget and Gabain.1932/1965; Vaish & Tomasello Reference Vaish, Tomasello, Killen and Smetana2014). To the extent that the Piagetian tradition is developmental, it also incorporates a type of pluralism. We don't judge the toddler in the same way as we judge the teenager.
I'll close by drawing the same issue that Doris raises at the end of his book, that of North America's Indigenous peoples and the personal impact of extrinsic conditions. Doris discusses the United States' Indigenous history, largely in the past tense, remarking how the destruction of extrinsic aspects of Indigenous culture destroyed Indigenous identity, even if people persist. If Canada's history with Indigenous people has been slightly less bloody, it is almost equally awful, relying on residential school systems and an Indian Act to “de-Indianize” Canada's Native population, resulting in a “cultural genocide” (Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 2015) alongside death through brutality and disease.
Back in the present, suicide rates among Indigenous youth in Canada are extremely high, frequently described as an epidemic. Research by developmental psychologists Michael Chandler, Chris Lalonde and colleagues explore the connection between extrinsic factors and questions of identity and agency (e.g., Chandler et al. Reference Chandler, Lalonde, Sokol and Hallett2003). Their research shows that as Indigenous communities regain governance of institutions such as fire-fighting, health, language, and policing, which are called markers of cultural continuity, suicide rates tend to go down, in some cases to much lower levels than in the European Canadian population. These markers of cultural continuity are extrinsic factors but also support a process of building back a sense of narrative, identity, and agency as youth begin to reflect on their future and their past.