Kohlberg's Model Of Moral Development

Morality is the principle concerning between what is the right behavior and what is the wrong behavior. Each person has different set of moral views, that can be influence by personal feelings, a group of other people or by the care for humanities as a whole. As people grow and mature, they go through a moral development causing them to change their moral views. Many argue that moral development is impossible to achieve, but other have proven that moral development is possible. As an individual matures or is faced by a crisis that their current mode of thinking is unable to satisfactorily resolve, people move beyond their current stage. As Kohlberg believed “that humans, with the exception of sociopaths and other impaired people, have and …show more content…
This pre-conventional stage would include people who do what is only beneficial for their own good. It is more common in younger children. People who are still stuck on the pre-conventional stage are believers of ethical subjectivism. Meaning that for them morality is just a matter of personal feelings. Sociopaths would also be an example of people found in the pre-conventional stage, such as Ted Bundy. Ted Bundy was a notorious serial killer who used ethical subjectivism to justify his actions. He stated that “all moral judgments are value judgments, that all value judgments are subjective, and that no one can be proven to be either right or wrong”. The problem with ethical subjectivism is that it can not acknowledge universal moral standards. Ethical subjectivism denied that universal moral standards even exist. In overall, the pre-conventional stage in the model would be defined as the state with the least amount of moral …show more content…
It does not care about an individual or a group of people, but it rather cares about the greatest net happiness for everyone. In the Utilitarianism theory, actions themselves are neither right or wrong, the rightness or wrongness is of an action is determined by its consequences. If an action greatest more produces more good or happiness than harm, then that action is morally accepted. An example of people found in the Post-conventional stage in utilitarianism were Jeremy Bentham and John stuart Mill. Although, they both disagree on the issue of satisfaction. According to Bentham, the happiness of any one individual is no more or less important than that of another. Meaning that the pleasure of a pig should count no more or less than those of a human. In the other hand, Mills disagreed with the statement. He believed that some pleasures are more desirable than others and that human life is qualitative better than the life of nonhumans animals. This lead Mills to say that “It is better to be humans being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool