Jake and Amy [The Heinz Dilemma]
Two 11 year olds: asked question:
A man's wife was extremely ill and in danger of dying. A certain drug might save her life, but the man could not afford it, in part because the druggist had set an unreasonably high price for it. The question was, whether the man should steal the drug.
Jake answered by trying to figure out the relative value of the woman's life and the druggists's right to his property.
Jake said the man should steal the drug.
Amy not so sure. She wondered what would happen to both the man and his wife if he stole the drug. "If he stole the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he did, he might have to go to jail, and then his wife might get sicker again." She said that is the husband and wife talked about this they might be able to think of some other way out of the dilemma.
Question: how would you work out this dilemma?
Point: Boy using rational calculation-weighing and comparing values
Girl: focused on possible effects of the proposed action on the two individuals and their relationship.
Is the difference in reasoning here the result of gender?
Men: rights, justice
Women: talking, caring, relationships
AN ETHICS OF CARE
Psychologist Carol Gilligan
Mid-1970s research showed: statistical differences in male and female perspectives on ethics.
Chart 110:
| Female Ethical Perspective | Male Ethical Perspective |
| Personal | Impersonal |
| Partial | Impartial |
| Private | Public |
| Natural | Contractual |
| Feeling | Reason |
| Compassionate | Fair |
| Concrete | Universal |
| Responsibility | Rights |
| Relationship | Individual |
| Solidarity | Autonomy |
Question: what is distinctive about these divisions?
Contrast men and women: women-relatedness
Women think about particular people and their relations and how they will be affected by some action.
Women's morality is highly personal.
110 c2 Primary moral obligation: prevent harm and to help people.
Empathetic, caring, compassionate morality.
Typical Male perspective: universal and impartial
Fairness, Justice
Balance of good effects over bad.
Moral law: like the public domains of law and contract.
Universalism that recognizes the equal moral worth of all as persons both in themselves and before the law.
Morality: a matter of doing one's duty, keeping agreements, and respecting other people's rights.
Virtues: impartiality and respectfulness
Question: what do you think about these two characterizations?
A: can you see them as two sides of morality?
B: is one necessarily female and one necessarily male?
Gilligan v. Kohlberg
Kohlberg follows Jean Piaget (1896-1989) a Swiss Psychologist claimed that the moral development of children is largely a rational process moving in stages.
Piaget's stages:
1. stage: child accepts parental rules out of fear
2. stage: the acceptance of rules is a matter of personal choice.
The child is able to understand why the rules need to be accepted.
Piaget said that as children grow, they develop a greater capacity for empathy--being able to put themselves in the place of another.
Lawrence Kohlberg's work is an extension of Piaget's.
Unlike Freud, Lawrence Kohlberg's (1927-1987) made extensive scientific studies in many cultures on the development of moral beliefs in groups of varying ages, educational levels and wealth.
His studies identified three levels of moral reasoning.
Each having two stages.
Look at the table on pg. 120
| Basis of moral development | Stages of Development |
| I; Moral value resides in external, physical needs rather than in persons and standards | Stage 1: Obedience and punishment orientation.
Egocentric deference to superior power or prestige, or a trouble-avoiding set. Objective responsibility. |
| Stage 2: Naively egoistic orientation. Right action is that instrumentally satisfying the self's needs and occasionally others. Awareness of relativism of value to each actor's needs and perspective. Naive egalitarianism and orientation to exchange and reciprocity. | |
| II. Moral value resides in performing good or right roles, in maintaining the conventional order and the expectations of others. | Stage 3: Good-boy orientation. Orientation to approval and to pleasing and helping others. Conformity to stereotypical images of majority or natural role behavior, and judgment by intentions. |
| Stage 4: Authority and social-order maintaining orientation. Orientation to "doing duty" and to showing respect for authority and maintaining the given social order for its own sake. Regard for earned expectations of others. | |
| III Moral value resides in conformity by the self to shared or shareable standards, rights, or duties. | Stage 5: Contractual legalistic orientation. Recognition of an arbitrary element or starting point in rules or expectations for the sake of agreement. Duty defined in terms of contract, general avoidance of violation of the will or rights of others, and the majority will and welfare. |
| Stage 6: Conscience or principle orientation. Orientation not only to actually ordained social rules but to principles of choice involving appeal to logical universality and consistency. Orientation to conscience as a directing agent and to mutual respect and trust. |
Stages: PRECONVENTIONAL LEVEL: most children under nine years of age.
At stage one of this level, children behave morally only to avoid punishment from those in authority, such as parents and teachers.
Next stage: children learn to recognize that other people have needs and that the right thing involves letting others meet their needs as well.
At this first level, moral needs are still external to the self and are not accepted as right in themselves.
Next LEVEL: The conventional level of morality: this is the level of most adolescents and adults in most societies.
Here the individual internalizes or accepts the rules of society and seeks to act accordingly.
At STAGE THREE, the individual is motivated by the need to be accepted by others.
Following the Golden rule.
Behaving with trust, loyalty and gratitude.
STAGE FOUR: the individual takes the perspective of the society and recognizes the need to contribute and maintain the social system as a whole.
At this level, laws are to be upheld except perhaps in extreme cases when a conflict with some other social rule occurs.
Respecting authority and maintaining the status quo are important.
HIGHEST LEVEL: THE POSTCONVENTIONAL LEVEL;
Here persons begins to make autonomous moral judgments.
They act on principles that they believe to be right, even if their society disagrees.
STAGE FIVE: the moral reasoning is of a utilitarian and contract orientation.
Right and wrong are determined by a sense of obligation to society at large and by what is the greatest good for the greatest number.
STAGE SIX: THE HIGHEST STAGE OF MORAL DEVELOPMENT: the individual achieves the belief that universal ethical principles exist such as the equal dignity of all persons, universal human rights and justice.
When one's society is in conflict with these self-chosen rational principles, the stage six person will follow his or her own principles.
Kohlberg's research indicates that individuals in all cultures go through the six stages, in the sequence he suggests, although not all individuals attain all the stages.
Once a stage is reached, persons do not regress to a lower stage.
Kohlberg ties educational level to whether one attains a higher stage
Kohlberg uses the HEINZ DILEMMA: A man names Heinz considers whether to steal a drug he cannot afford to buy because the drug is essential for saving his wife's life.
Two eleven year olds: Jake and Amy are presented with the Heinz dilemma.
JAKE says--steal the drugs, it's a conflict between property values and life. Logically, life must be given a greater value than property because it is irreplaceable.
AMY says--don't steal the drugs, try to work things out.
Stealing would harm the druggist, might even harm Heinz.
The wife shouldn't be allowed to die, but some other way must be found.
KOHLBERG: Jake, and men in general, are more morally mature than women--they are more morally rational.
Gilligan critical of Kohlberg for overlooking or downgrading the ethics of care
Saying Jake is more morally mature than Amy.
111 c1
Three questions for theory that men and women exhibit a different type of moral reasoning.
1. Is it true?
2. If true, how do we explain it?
3. Is one form of moral thinking better?
111 C2 IS THERE A GENDER DIFFERENCE IN MORALITY?
Question: how could we answer this question?
Gilligan less hard line in her more recent studies.
Still: even her latest studies of "educationally advantaged North American adolescents and adults" still finds men focused on justice with women divided between justice and care.
McKinnon-without women, the care perspective would be absent.
Big Question: is what difference there is a matter of social status and experience as gender
Feminist debate: Essentialism, anti-Essentialism
Aristotle a key essentialist
If you compared stay-at-home dads v. women parole officers, would you get the same justice-care distinction based on gender?
112 c2 THE SOURCE OF FEMININE MORALITY
Freudian account of the effects of psychosocial development
Nancy Chodorow: Differing paths of development of the self:
Men: independent self
Women: relational self
Caroline Whitbeck: biological view
Women give birth and hence are more caring and nurturing
Sara Ruddick: maternal practice results in maternal thinking
113 C1-until now it has been a social phenomenon that maternal practice has been principally women's work.
113 C1 FEMININE VERSUS MASCULINE MORALITY
We can look at the empirical questions here: factual questions.
Compare care theories with traditional ethical theories.
Does the ethics of care provide a better moral orientation?
Are the two complementary?
Could we develop both sets of virtues?
113 C2 FEMINIST THOUGHT
Not all feminist writers support an ethics of care.
Is a care ethics all that good?
Problems:
1. Based on relations among unequals-like mother-child relation
Dependency there only goes one way.
Does this ethic reinforce a one-sided morality of self-sacrifice and subjugation?
Typically women are asked to make the sacrifice.
Does it continue women's status as second class citizens?
Cites Seyla Benhabib: gender-sex system may appear to be gender-based i.e. essential
Really not: women don't need to define themselves as the opposite of men.
They can define their own positions and identities.
Example: Natural Rights: Mary Wollstonecraft-a Vindication of the rights of women.
Women not naturally weak and submissive
Simone de Beauvoir. The Second Sex
Women regarding themselves as an "other" to men-becoming the second sex.
Feminist v. Feminine ethics
Feminine ethics-care ethics
Feminist ethics-more political-working to raise the status of women world wide
Aristotle or Rousseau-women not as rational as men.
Feminists critical of even contemporary philosophers for not giving women their due.
115 c1 EVALUATION OF FEMINIST THOUGHT AND THE ETHICS OF CARE
Questions about care ethics
1. Mothering does not always come naturally to women
Not all women are good care givers
Response: Care ethics as a viable and valuable alternative morality
2. Feminine traits might not be of benefit to women.
Continue woman's subservient position.
Virtues of: obedience, self-sacrifice, silence and service.
Response: these aren't the virtues that define an ethics of care
Rather: ethics of care tells us we judge morality from the perspective of concrete people in relation to one another who can be harmed and benefitted in particular ways.
No separation between private and public
The two realms overlap: The personal is political
115 c2 What happens in the personal life, particularly in relations between the sexes, is not immune form the dynamic of power, which has typically been seen as a distinguishing feature of the political
One further question 116 c1
Care ethics: describes an ideal context for ethical decision making.
Problem: it does not tell us how we are to determine what will help and harm particular individuals.
It doesn't say what constitutes benefit and harm.
No rules for what to do in cases of conflict of interest.
Response-sets a context for decision.
That's valuable.
Carol Gilligan
May facilitate women's ability to speak about their experiences and perceptions.
Alternative natural history of moral development in which care is ascendant
Noddings: rethinking ethics
Like Buber's I-Thou and I-It relationships (119 c1-Sartre, Heidegger-all men)
Moving away from the contract and moral geometry emphasis of contemporary male ethics
Think of Kant here-later ethics even more geometric.
Giving a place to subjectivity.
She concludes 119 c2 120 c1
When I look at my child-even one of my grown children-and recognize the fundamental relation in which we are defined, I often experience a deep and overwhelming joy. It is the recognition of and longing for relatedness that form the foundation of our ethic, and the joy that accompanies fulfilment of our caring enhances our commitment to the ethical ideal that sustains as one-caring.
Similar direction: countering a "male" point of view in ethics towards objectivity, fairness, justice.
Poses the "care perspective" against the "justice perspective."
Question on 123: Does non-interference = neglect?
Liberal v. Communitarian approaches
Laws and bills of rights to protect some in-group or elite.
Women are often left out.
She concludes 126 C1-c2
It is clear, I think, that the best moral theory has to be a cooperative product of women and men, has to harmonize justice and care. The morality it theorizes about is after all for all persons, for men and women, and will need their combined insights. As Gilligan said, what we need now is a "marriage" of the old male and the newly articulated female insights. If she is right about the special moral aptitudes of women, it will most likely be the women who propose the marriage, since they are the ones with more natural empathy, with the better diplomatic skills, the ones more likely to shoulder responsibility and take moral initiative, and the ones who find it easiest to empathize and care about how the other party feels. Then, once there is this union of male and female moral wisdom, we maybe can teach each other the moral skills each gender currently lacks, so that the gender difference in moral outlook that Gilligan found will slowly become less marked.
