Question1:

As I'm sure you all know, Piaget identified three main sets of concrete operational systems:-
Logical (dealing with logical and numerical operations between objects);
Infralogical (dealing with logical and measureable operations within an object);
"Les valeurs" - values stemming from affectivity with economics being analagous to arithmetic and measurement.
Now, I am aware of  Piaget's books "The Moral Judgement of the Child" and "Intelligence and Affectivity", but what I am not aware of is any other serious exposition by Piaget as to what "Les Valeurs" really are.

I would be very grateful for any pointers to works by Piaget or anyone else who has made a serious attempt to get to grips with what a concrete operational system of Values might look like.  References to works either in english or french would be fine.  (Or even Swedish, Arne?)

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Answer1:

Before retiring I did a lot of research on values and the development thereof which no one else in the field seemed to have any interest in.  I got discouraged and did not publish any of it.

Answer2:

There is a great deal of work on the development of character, values, moral judgment and action.  Some of it is Piagetian based.  Use Google to find it.
Here is a website that gives a brief review.
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/morchr/morchr.html

Answer3:
Look for the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Very interesting deveolpment of moral stages and construction.

Answer4:

You in fact should look for the work of Kohlberg, and after that, look for the work of Kohlberg´s colleagues such as Blasi, Rest, Narvaez, Thoma, Higgins, Power, and Nucci. In fact Nucci has a web page with some interesting articles on it. This is the web page:
http://tigger.uic.edu/~lnucci/MoralEd/

Answer5:

This is a good question, both with regard to Piaget's model and in general for any empirical model dealing with normativity.

The short answer is that Piaget's framework as set out in Origins of Intelligence {first few pages] is Kantian in the sense that one and the same mind will have "many parts", some cognitive, others affective, others conative, but if they are all parts of the "the same mind", there would have to be some unifying principle. Kant had an argument about the a priori here. Piaget's main claim was that, whatever its merits, factual questions arise, eg: about the actual formation of a priori understanding. And alas: Piaget almost never took this on comprehensively, i.e. almost never had an empirical investigation with a multiple focus on several norms at once. One exception is in his Sociological Studies [Routledge, 1995. chap 7] dealing with cognitive and affective aspects of children's views about one's homeland and foreigners.

Arguably, he did not take this on because the logic Piaget used on cognition was extensional, dealing with truth values - see his formal models of concrete or formal operations [Traite de Logique, 1949; cf. Chapman's summary in his 1988 book in English}. But his model of values [Sociological Studies, 1995, chap. 2-3] was never formalised in this way. There is a good reason why: it would require an intensional logic [eg: deontic logic - see von Wright (1963) Norm and Action].

In his last works [Piaget & Garcia, 1991.Toward a logic of meanings], Piaget shifted to an intensional logic. But this was confined to the cognitive domain - once again leaving norms in other domains out of the final reckoning.

And yet: some of his own data was interpreted  - by Piaget - in terms of "obligated conjunctions". See also his 3 final papers on Raison [Reason] where this notion is also explicit. And that is interesting [as in Piaget's own claim about his optimism for psychology "we see new problems every day"

Raison: see my website below:
www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/edres/staff/smith/

Answer6:

Although Kohlberg and his successors did a lot of valuable work, moral judgement is by no means the only aspect of values. At least in European languages, words like  ®value ¯ and worth ¯ crop up everywhere, from arithmetic to economics, and I would be completely at a loss to explain how they fit together. I would very much like to hear what anyone has to say on this.

Answer7:

Thanks to everyone who's replied. It's always good to be fed info like this as, working in a non-academic environment, I find it a little difficult to know where to look.

I think my initial question wasn't specific enough, and Les' response below gets closest to the kind of issues I was thinking about.  Piaget obviously produced a great deal of work concerning concrete operations, but it seems he never elaborated on what he might have meant by a concrete operational system of "values".  Has anyone else? Kohlberg's moral stages don't seem to encroach on what a concrete operational system of values might mean.

In Sociological Studies, Piaget comes the closest I've ever seen for such an attempt, though "Intelligence and Affectivity " broadens the domain of a concrete operational coordination of values to embrace the will itself, although in this latter work, I think he meant the coordination of affectivity in general, rather than just values.  In the (fantastic) introduction to Origins of Intelligence, Piaget suggests that value (in the
abstract) has something to do with the means-ends relation and with the relationships between part-and-whole, part and Totality.

This then brings into question just what is meant by the term "value".  Is it just moral principle?  Does it always have to be normative?  Or could it mean what the object is *worth* to the subject in the widest possible sense?
For example, from a Piagetian point of view, does the value that a sentimentally prized photograph has for me have anything in common with the moral value of "thou shalt not kill"?   And does the functional use-value I might ascribe to my car have any psychological commonality with the aesthetic value of a flower?   I really really would appreciate people giving their opinions about these questions.

Answer8:

Lamborn, S., Fischer, K.W., & Pipp, S.L. (1994). Constructive criticism and social lies: A developmental sequence for understanding honesty and kindness in social relationships. Developmental Psychology, 30, 495-508.

Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development, (Cambridge,2000); Martin L. Hoffman, "Varieties of Empathy-Based Guilt," in Jane Bybee, ed., Guilt and Children, (Academic Press, 1998).

Nancy Eisenberg, "Emotion Regulation and Moral Development," Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 51 (2000), pp. 665-697; June P. Tangney and Kurt W. Fischer, eds., Self-conscious Emotions: The Psychology of Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment, and Pride (Guilford, 1995).

Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development ; Tamara J. Ferguson and Hedy Stegge, "Emotional States and Traits in Children: The Case of Guilt and Shame," in Tangney and Fischer, pp. 174-197.

Question2:

Is there work in this area of very young children ages 2 to 5?

Answer1:

I've always thought of Piaget's view of values in connection with his work on Affectivity.  Thus it is a valuing in a wide sense of making choices which hold in mind the emotional consequences of one sort of action or another.  Thus, "conserving" the values of long-term consequences such as the feeling of competency and pleasure once you have finished your work even though it is difficult when you could be out enjoying the immediate pleasure of a company of friends.  I'm eager to read some of the suggested work, because of my curiosity of how culture influences this learning process. 

Answer2:

I think you may be mixing up moral values with other types of values that are non moral in nature (but that still express a person´s evaluation), such as conventional or personal values. Moral values are prescriptive, the others are not. In Kantian terms, moral values express a categorical imperative, social values express a hipotetical imperative, and personal values are only maxims. Kohlberg was mainly interested in  moral values.

Answer3:

1: All moral values are values, but not all values are moral values For example A good experiment A good proof neither concerns moral values. In general, evaluations can be undertaken for anything at all.
G. H. von Wright. The varieties of Goodness. Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963.
See also his Norm and Action, 1963 on Ideal Rules - one of six types of norm See also Robert Brandom. Articulating Reasons. Harvard University Press, 2000.

2: Values are often vague
Example
Mum to son: Be a good boy
Son to mum: you are such a good mother

One way to clarify things is to specify a partiuclar norm in that norms have a logic [this is logic is modal logic, and is intensional] and can be made as explicit as youy please
a: either about what what ought, or may, or should not be done;
b: or about what ought, or may, or should not be Their modal properties are comparable; but one concerns human action, the other human thought L. Smith & J. Voneche. Norms in Human Development. Cambridge University Press, 2006

3: Piaget on values
Sociological Studies (Routledge, 1995)
chap 2 + 3:
a sketch of a formal modal [not followed through  for the reason in my last email: values require an intensional logic, whereas "classic" Piaget was reliant on an extensional logic]

chap. 4:
analysis of moral, legal, and personal values

4: Logic
Example
extensional logic is transitive
If Peter is as tall as Paul, and if Paul is as tall as Mary, it follows that Peter is as tall as Mary

intensional logic is non-transitive
If Peter loves Paul, and if Paul loves Mary, it does not follow that Peter loves Mary

S. Haack. The philosophy of logics. Cambridge University Press, 1978

Answer4:

I was mixing up various kinds of values quite deliberately. It seems to me that, although by no means identical, separating moral, social, economic, aesthetic and other kinds of value quite so radically is the mistake, because values of all kinds all have a common core of normativity. I would also contest the idea that only moral values are prescriptive ¨C indeed, given that they are constructed according to an assumed set of rules, even the blandest of facts contain an element of value ¨C the values inherent in the rules of their construction, such as the rules of logic (e.g., coherence) and mathematics (e.g., consistency), and the rules set out by social systems and relationships (.g, roles), the rules produced by the processes of abstraction to which Piaget devoted so much attention, and so on. Or at least, that is how I understand Piaget ¯s account of action and development.

So Kohlberg, as a theorist of specifically moral values, doesn ¯t really answer the question of a Piagetian approach to values in general. It was also because he insisted that such distinctions were radical that Kant was rightly criticised by Hegel. The radical dissociation of moral from other values is neither necessary nor even particularly plausible, and it certainly should not be assumed by any would-be science of values.

Question3:

I am interested in the spiritual development of young children.  Please share with me ways in which the value of spirituality, wonderment fall into Piagetian values.  What are Piagetian values anyway?

Answer1:

That there are "mixings" between values cannot be disputed.  For example, we do not (as a society) always think it's worth the cost of giving expensive treatment to people dying of either preventable, or curable disease.  The value of human life is indeed given a price tag (in a manner of speaking).  Similarly, the aesthetic value of art directly enters the market place and obtains economic value.

More significantly, I think, values are forever intermingled within the one mind and probably never exist in raw isolation as of this category or that.  My car has functional value to me.  It may also have aesthetic value (my "nice" car) ; sentimental value  (my "long suffering" car); and even moral value (I really should stop polluting the air). In short, my single and unitary *evaluation* of my car may entail many considerations, but I would suggest that those considerations (those different categories of value) only have real existence in their analysis by a thinker.  The rest of the time, it's just a matter of  "I quite like my car".

In its vicariousness, it might seem that value only has the overall subjective meaning of "what the object is *worth* to the subject".  How that relates to affectivity, I'm not sure. But I'm beginning to think that Piaget might have been wrong to suggest that value (in this sense of the term, which may not have been Piaget's) has anything to do with being related to either logical or infralogical concerete operations.  The terminology of operations was, I think, proper to epistemology, not necessarily to existential psychology (and I'm not an existentialist!).  [ However, having said that, 'Sociological Studies' and 'Toward a Logic of Meanings'  (as Les pointed out) contain arguments to contradict this. :-(   ]

Nevertheless, any serious reader of Piaget's works must surely conclude that an individual's knowledge, experience and use of value must necessarily have undergone a profoundly qualitative developmental construction.  Therefore, during the stage of concrete operations, there would have been cognitive advances in the construction and experience of values that are analogous in some manner to the qualitative advances evidenced by concrete operations per se.  And identifying this "analogousness" is what really interests me.

So I'm left with a couple of problems.   Is Value properly to be broken down in to moral value, economic value, etc.?  Do such divisions actually bear out in the workings and dealings of pragmatic life away from the philosopher's pen?   And, if so and if not, is the terminology of concrete operations actually going to be of use to my endeavour?  Please please do take issue with any of this and let me know what your opinions are.

Answer2:

I have always assumed that values are, in part if not wholly, the result of judgments.  Judgment is an amorphous area in psychology.  It is surely affected by knowledge, by developmental level, by social influences, and by affect.  I tried looking at value judgements by pre-schoolers with respect to what they do and don't like to eat, judgement of pictures might be another area to look at.  Even at these young ages children have decided opinions....based in part, no doubt on familiarity (Zajonc) but what is going on is not very clear.

Answer3:

I have just come back from the U. of Memphis where I lectured on the important concepts related to educator's connection to Piaget's revised model of equilibration (his late revision of his theory which is not in textbooks):emphasis on empirical and reflective abstraction, contradiction [puzzlement]  and the revised model of contradiction. You need to contact Sandra Brown Turner who is Director of the Barbara L. Lipman Early Childhood School and Research Institute.  She has written  important articles on the spirituality of children. I was very impressed by the tour of her school and  her personal approach to the child's inner self.

Answer4:

I ¯m afraid I don ¯t really have an answer to your question. I wish I had.

As far as I am aware there are no Piagetian values, at least not in the sense that there are Christian values or socialist values or even scientific values. Piaget offered more of an approach to understanding how any values come into existence. Not content with the simple philosophical or religious assertion or even explanation of the values themselves, he wanted to know how in practice values arise in real people ¨C an altogether different question. Les Smith ¯s Necessary Knowledge is an excellent introduction to a lot of the issues, though it technically quite demanding.

Unlike some of the other contributors to this discussion (e.g., Les Smith or Andr¨¦ Hopper, who started this thread), I have not made a special study of values. However, I have spent a good deal of time wondering how to extend ideas like Piaget ¯s (and in the other human sciences as a whole there are actually several models of human nature that broadly parallel or complement Piaget ¯s) could be extended into areas such as wisdom or spirituality. Helena Marchand ¯s  ®Overview of the psychology of wisdom ¯ (which you can find from ) is a useful starting point, although it is mainly devoted to adults.

One of the fundamental problems seems to be that developmental psychologists are reluctant to look at any idea as contentious as  ®spirituality ¯. First and foremost it sounds all too unscientific to anyone who imagines that reductionism is the only legitimate form of science. But there is also an all but universal reluctance on the part of the sciences to study any aspect of spirituality. And even where such things are studied, there seems to be an irresistible urge to render such things into the dullest, least inspiring terms, as though dissecting and pickling something did not violate its most essential nature. As a result there are relatively few sources in the sciences on any aspect of values that tell us much of real value.

I find this a bit odd, for two reasons. Firstly, what could possibly be more characteristically human than spirituality? So why does it figure so little in the human nature sciences? And secondly, it is not as though spirituality and wonder are difficult to observe. People (children and adults) are being spiritual and wondering about the world around them literally all the time. They literally can ¯t help it. But when we study a small child struggling with a new idea, we entirely fail to notice (or at least report) the wonder and spiritual depth of such events. 

I have my own Piagetian ideas about why people fall in love, why they laugh, why they stare at the stars and why they dream, but I am afraid they would not go down well in this forum. On the other hand, they are not couched in terms other Piagetians would find offensive, although they do require a fair bit of extension to Piaget ¯s conceptual framework.

The situation is not hopeless: science does not have to be like this. If you look at the great social scientists of the 19th century (including the psychologists), they were more than willing to tackle such issues, and often had a great deal of real interest to say. Quite often it is a real revelation. For example, if you read only modern neo-Darwinian theory you would think that Darwin discounted everything but adaptation and natural selection. But if you read his Descent of Man, he refers to human moral judgement about as often as adaptation. But somewhere in the middle of the 20th century, reductionism and scientism took control and psychology lost its nerve. 

At least in Anglo-Saxon countries, philosophy has been no better. But again, go back to the heyday of Kant, Hegel and their contemporaries and such issues are well to the fore ¨C and again, all part of one world-view with science. It was after all Kant who spoke of the  ®starry heavens above and the moral law within ¯ - the words are even on his tombstone, I believe. 

So, a paradoxical conclusion. On the hand, Piaget ¯s theory probably offers the most powerful tool available for understanding a child ¯s spirituality and wonderment. But it is most unlikely that you will find anything in the Piagetian literature that captures that sense of wonder or the spiritual struggle and transcendence you will find in any child any day of the week. 

Sorry to give you such a pessimistic answer. If anyone else has a more encouraging reply, I would dearly like to hear it.

Answer5:

In order to make my observations about values related to culture, I want to give you some background, because I suspect many readers have not had these experiences.  So, if you ¯ll bear with me (or just delete J):

Having spent time in Zimbabwe and Tanzania, where discrepancies between rich and poor are more  °in your face ± than most Americans experience, and where infrastructure problems are difficult or impossible to avoid, even if you have resources available, has made me think a lot about how we develop values, the relationship of habits and norms and what  °cultural influence ± means.

Example of the influence of circumstances and habit on values, norms and cultural standards:  In Dar es Salaam, (a city now of 2-3 million people), there are huge parts of the city in which the roads (difficult to call them streets) in residential areas are dirt and less well kept up than the most rural county dirt road I ¯ve ever been on in the U.S.  The major streets leading into  °downtown ± are basically two lane and mornings and evening  °rush hour ±  always crowded with traffic that is literally bumper to bumper.   These dirt roads are not only in poor areas, but right outside houses which are larger and richer and fancier than any of my friends in Ohio live in, in the most affluent parts of the city.  The effect of the dirt back streets is that, what would be a 10 minute drive on well paved streets, becomes a 30 minute drive, partly on these dirt back streets and partly on paved  °major arteries ± (two lanes) of traffic (again, literally bumper to bumper) moving at 5 miles an hour; because there are few of the  °main streets ± and they all go into city center.  It is only the pretty rich who have cars, most people with jobs travel in dhala-dhalas (ordinary sized mini-vans that are crowded like sardines in a can----I ¯ve been in ones that had 25 people in them and one hanging onto the open door), or walk long distances.   One of my colleagues at the university where I ¯m teaching just now in Dar has to travel by these dhala-dhalas for an hour and a half each way to get to work.  I could give you other examples regarding the availability of water, electricity, money, and so on. 

One more time example:  TZ is about 1/3 Muslim and 1/3 Christian and national holidays are both religious and historical.  Thus, the end of Ramadan is coming next week---a two day holiday, but no on knows when it will begin (Th? Fri? Sat?  Sun?).  It begins when the Imams agree, based on something about the phases of the moon.  However, it is a national holiday and schools, and most businesses will be closed.

Now to values, habits and culture:  People here (both Tanzanians and ex-pats) talk about  °African time ± as if it is a cultural value---in fact, it is difficult to start meetings etc. on time, because people are often late.  Even among professionals in academic institutions, it is somewhat acceptable to be late and not unheard of not to show up for a set meeting-----though some grumble, while others treat it as matter-of-fact.  Is this because Tanzanians value time differently than do people in the US?  At what point does thinking about time differently out of necessity become part of the culture?  Has a  °normal ± way of thinking about time become a habit---thus even a cultural norm out of necessity?  It is difficult to value punctuality when you know how difficult transportation and traffic are.   Don ¯t children learn to value those choices that are first made for them by parents---cleanliness, order, regular church-going or praying, reading, education? 

Answer6:

A very interesting question, and I can ¯t think of a short answer, so I will try to write a sensible long one.

I would suggest that, as a general (and, I think, Piagetian) principle, attitudes, social conventions, parental advice and other cultural patterns become values when they inform activity directly. For example, Piaget ¯s theory is all about the emergence of the values of coherence and consistency in activity and experience. But this principle applies just as much to social values as to individual cognition. 

As you know, industrial societies and emerging economies such as Tanzania have generally different patterns of working activity ¨C we assume a different system of roles, we assume that commodities and money will legitimately perform almost universal functions that are much less pervasive elsewhere, and so on. More to the point, not only is it practically impossible to take action in an industrial society (more correctly a capitalist society) without recourse to money and commodities, but we all take money and commodities absolutely for granted. In other words, we operate a pattern of economic values (property, exchange, rules of employment, rights and obligations, and so on) that westerners not only employ completely uncritically (and largely unconsciously) but also foist this system of values on others. And we do this, I would say, not because it is somehow inherently right or more rational than any alternative but because this is simply the routine pattern we take for granted, and which is supported by a huge range of institutions that enforce these values. 

From the point of view of a country like Tanzania, which is (whether it likes it or not) making the painful transition from a rural economy to a system of commodity relations (in products, labour, and so on), there are likely to be widespread contradictions between the various patterns of activity that are taken for granted in various segments of society and in different circumstances. As real individuals actually live in a variety of such segments (e.g., home life, employment, trading, political relationships, and so on), this will almost inevitably generate conflicts not only between different segments but within the lives of individuals. 

Not everything changes, of course. Most of the specific items you mention - cleanliness, order, regular church-going or praying, reading, education ¨C are likely to be common to both  ®before ¯ and  ®after ¯ situations. The most likely exception is probably church-going - both industrialism and capitalism are at best indifferent to religion. So there is no reason to think that the value placed on such things will change, although I would expect them to be progressively redefined and attitudes to them to become more instrumental than normative. However, because industrialism relies heavily on the technically efficient use of resources (not least time) and capitalism enforces the maximum exploitation of resources (again, not least time), I would expect the whole attitude to time to change. In a rural economy, time is used according to a process of economic production that itself depends on the demands of crops, livestock, and so on. Some time is used intensively (during sowing, harvest, calving, and so on), other time can be spent more expansively ¨C in leisure, social rituals, and so on. There is no pressure to make better use of time, because in that context the only definition of  ®better ¯ would be to meet the needs of current activity. So long as this is being done well enough not to threaten the annual cycle of agricultural reproduction, there will be little pressure to exploit time either more intensively (e.g., by working harder ¨C or making others do so) or more exactly (e.g., by the clock). 

But as the pressure for economic change grows, time will come to mean something quite different ¨C something of which there is never enough, and which is always spent in pursuit of something outside the current moment - profit, production targets, and so on. And since both the technically efficient use of time and the maximum exploitation of the labour of individual workers means that their individual time must be thoroughly coordinated, there will be more pressure for people to show up to meetings, finish work on time, comply with joint plans, and so on. This will lead to the complete transformation of the value of time in every part of society, except areas that are carefully corralled off from the pressures of economic change ¨C and so far, no one has succeeded in corralling off very much for very long. 

Of course, one of the major conflicts this creates is between the values taught by parents, tribal elders, and so on, and the forms of activity that are routine by both industrial and capitalist standards. The latter will not initially be seen as embodying any particular values ¨C they are simply pragmatic ways of earning a living. But for them to be assimilated fully, it is necessary for the individual ¯s prior value system to accommodate to them. Again, unless it is possible to make a clear and explicit distinction between these two different value systems, it is likely that the new view of time will eventually obliterate the old one. Or if not obliterate, reduce to a somewhat anomalous set of values proper to a narrow range of situations ¨C the home, church, tribal events, and so on. This will naturally lead to internal conflicts on every level, expressed through every medium from heated disputes to bombings, just as the early rise of capitalist industry led to machine-breaking, outbursts of millennialism, peasant risings and dozens of other phenomena.

The evidence suggests that there may later be a return to previous values (e.g., the return of magical beliefs among the university-educated in Ghana), but my own expectation would be that a) this will be a domesticated version of the previous beliefs, b) it will not affect core economic or social activities, and c) it won ¯t last. 

Incidentally, this is far more than a matter of values. As I have argued at some length elsewhere (RJ Robinson 2004, The History of Human Reason, from [url=http://www.prometheus.org.uk]http://www.prometheus.org.uk), the transition that is currently happening in Tanzania and the Third World generally is closely analogous to that between concrete and formal operations. Not that the inhabitants in pre-capitalist/pre-industrial societies are all concrete operational or the inhabitants of Western societies are all formal operational! Rather, the social systems considered as a whole are broadly equivalent to concrete and formal operations. For example, advanced capitalist/industrial societies are regulated through strictly formal structures such as bureaucracies, contracts, and (as I have already said) commodities and money. These are all formal in the sense that they are indifferent to the content and context in and to which they are applied. In pre-capitalist/pre-industrial societies, by contrast, relationships depend on the particular empirical conditions in which they operate. Thus, a tribal (or feudal) system typically depends quite heavily on discrete and unique relationships, if not between individuals then certainly between sub-groups such as age-sets, which have different rights and responsibilities ¨C quite the opposite of the universal  ®equality before the law ¯ approach of the West ¯s very formal system. Likewise, what we experience as strictly formal systems such as bureaucracy or money depend in other societies on concrete rights and relationships. There is also a level of social relationships that parallels pre-operational reasoning too. There may also be a post-formal form of society too.

Answer7:

One of the things that varies most of all across culture are values -- especially beyond the core values about murder and robbery.  Who is valued differs, who can punish, what the punishment can be, how food is divided, how income is divided, what is corruption, etc.

Answer8:

This is the problem.
only when we can understand that we belong to humankind and believe in universal values we will respect other people.
think about giving more than receiving, then we will discover common good, justice, share and love.

Answer9:

We agree.  But that is a metasystematic stage understanding.

Answer10:

Only when we can understand that we belong to humankind and believe in universal values we will respect other people.

MLC:  At the metasystematic stage there is humankind and universal values and universal respect for others.  Humankind is a collection of all groups of people defined in every possible way.  Humankind includes sinners, killers, monster people, etc.  It is very hard for people to get around that. 

At the systematic stage, there are systems of people -- my corporation, my country.

Answer11:

Probably the best single source on how values vary between cultures and the developmental stages that moral values pass in different social conditions through is Hallpike ¯s Evolution of Moral Understanding (published by the Prometheus Research Group 2004 ¨C http://www.prometheus.org.uk). This is not strictly a Piagetian work, but its organisation of the subjects makes it easy to read a strongly Piagetian interpretation into it. Hallpike is of course the author of The Foundations of Primitive Thought, which set out a comprehensive Piagetian interpretation of the development of the relationship between cognition and social structure.

Answer12:

I would have thought that belief in universal values is one of the hallmarks of routine formal operations.

Answer13:

Not when one inlcudes despised people.  Formal operations coordinates values of variables.  So one such relationship is as follows.

X follows the rules and regulations and is therefore acceptable.
Y breaks the rules and regualations and therefore is not acceptable. 

Answer14:

Surely both the examples you give are applications of the same rule (pass and fail are simply different results of the same operation), and it is easy to construct a rule that encompasses the despised too ¨C love them because they are human beings. Not a rule I would be quite at home with, but quite rational ¨Cand still formal operational. So would any other capacity to formally integrate systems of formal systems. The fact that a structure consists of re-applications of itself to its own products (as the term meta-systematic implies) is not enough to make it a new stage. Indeed, given that it is still based on the same fundamental structure, it specifically cannot be another stage.

On the other hand, it may represent a higher sub-stage within a major stage, but unfortunately the idea of sub-stages within developmental stages seems never to have had the popularity it deserves ¨C yet Piaget ¯s account of sensorimotor development provides a perfectly sound model that could easily be applied to later stages too. (There is a chapter about sub-stages in my The History of Human Reason.) On that basis, I would expect basic formal operational reasoning to mature at about sub-stages 3-4 of formal operations as a whole, and the subsequent sub-stages 5 and 6 to consist of elaborations and reworkings of just the kind you suggest are new stages.

On the other hand, I find the idea of a post-formal level of reason quite believable ¨C even, given the obvious limitations and even contradictions of formal operations, unavoidable. (There is also a chapter about post-formal stages in my The History of Human Reason.) But I think that what defines new stages is that each one represents a qualitative advance on its predecessors. By qualitative I mean the ability to do things no previous stage could do and the ability to automatically avoid the errors of the previous stages. This is certainly the relationship between all the previous stages in cognitive development. One certainly arrives at such a revolutionary change by a process like the idea of a meta-systematic level suggests ¨C the application of a structure to itself ¨C but the example you give does not amount to a qualitative break of the kind one sees between, say, concrete and formal operations. On the other hand, a truly dialectical structure would do the trick. But I think it would take a bit more than an email to explain what I mean. Meanwhile, I can almost hear delete keys being pressed all over the planet ­

Answer15:

Love them because they are human beings is indeed formal.  [If they are human, then love them]

But the original statement was quite different. 

This is the problem.  Only when we can understand that we belong to humankind and believe in universal values we will respect other people.

We belong to humankind is more complex then we are human beings.  1.  It asserts that there is membership as in a social contract sense.  This is absent in "we are humans"

"Only when we can understand that we belong to humankind

The "only when we can understand that" -- is a reflection on our membership is the entire society of human beings -- makes it metasystematic.

The statement  "Only when we believe in universal values we will respect other people."  This might appear to be just formal because if has the same if --then structure.  But you are missing the point of what the objects are.  Hierarchical more complex actions operates on lower order actions.  The relation is if then but the objects are systems.  The we is not our group, our friends, our peers, our company, our nation.  The we is mankind -- a system.  The respect other people is all other people  -- inside and outside of our group, our friends, our peers, our company, our nation.  Relating two systems is metasystematic.

Answer16:

As to the rest of your response, it will take me a little while to assimilate it to the sensory-motor schemes I presently experience everyday.  I am in an academic setting and large city surroundings, therefore the rural TZ life and economies  °without resource to money or commodities ± is very far from my experience.  Most of the day, I among people very much like in their values to those I meet and interact with every day in Ohio.  However, when I try to pay for my 800Tsh (Tanzanian shilling---about 0.80$USD) lunch at the university  °food court ± with a 10,000Tsh bill (about $10USD), they tell me they can ¯t make change, because it is too large a bill.  The university is a teaching hospital, so almost all the lecturers are physicians as well.  

In addition, amidst all the similarities in choice of activities and expressed values I see everyday in my colleagues here, I am reminded by my own living situation-----in a very nice apartment with doctors and university professors as my neighbors------ that even professionals (very  °westernized ±) have many more challenges to the behaviors and habits we take for granted virtually everywhere in the U.S. and most of the more industrialized world.  When I see how well-dressed and  °western ± professional people look and think about where they live and the fact that they may have spent the whole evening without electricity (for several hours on several nights for the past two weeks) and may have had to bathe in a bucket of water (as I do everyday, for lack of water pressure in the shower), I marvel at how similar academic life and what I would call  °academic values ± are here to those I find back in Ohio.

I ¯m also trying to assimilate what Les and Michael and others have said as well.

I promise to re-read your email more carefully later (even though I value this discussion a great deal J), but must now place a higher value on preparing for a meeting tomorrow, while I have electricity.

Answer17:

From my own point of view, belonging to humankind is indeed more complex than a simple universal truth an does indeed involve an analysis of the social relationships through which membership of humankind is actually constructed and mediated. It is also because of the nature of these relationships and social systems that membership of  ®humankind ¯ is such a dubious honour ¨C I find it hard to take the SS or the KGB to my heart, and both of those dubious organisations were as much direct expressions of the social systems that make humanity what it is as Nelson Mandela. However, there is nothing in Maria Judith ¯s original remark that requires any level of social analysis or even sensibility. On the contrary, the most famous statements of this principle such as the Ten Commandments (love their neighbour as thyself) and the Sermon on the Mount seem specifically to reject any such subtleties in favour of a kind of  ®direct perception ¯ of our shared humanity.

But even if we do include a social element in the original sentiment, it still does not require anything more than formal operations. As I mentioned in a previous email, I do not doubt that there is (and must be) a post-formal stage, but this is not an argument for it.

Answer18:

It was exactly Maria Lins argument that it is not a dubious honour but a necessity.  It is hard to engage in metasystematic reasoning and even a stage higher to  reflect on it. 

One of the facts of life is that metasystematic reasoning must be downward assimilated.  Otherwise, it would lose its power.  So humankind at the systematic stage becomes being human at the formal stage.

You offer another classical example.  Ten Commandments (love their neighbor as thyself) is an abstract stage assertion.  But the underlying principal is metasystematic.  why should you love your neighbor as thyself?  Because we do not know which position we will be in, the person loving thy neighbor or our neighbor.  Therefore the commandment has a service meaning and stage and then it has the stage associated with its justification.

It is also because of the nature of these relationships and social systems that membership of  ®humankind ¯ is such a dubious honour ¨C I find it hard to take the SS or the KGB to my heart, and both of those dubious organizations.

Answer19:

It is a difficult piece to score.  But years of experience makes it easier.  You might want to read the scoring manual that is posted in the website below to see why I am pretty confident in the scoring. 

It really comes down to how the systems you mention, the system of the SS or the KGB is coordinated with the rest to form mankind.  It is not hard to see why from the metasystematic perspective.  One consequence is one can care about SS and KGB people and not like what they do. 

Answer20:

It is not only to state a "  simple universal truth". I agree with you, if it is only a statement, then it does not require any level of social analysis or even sensibility. But if it is to understand,  there is  a post-formal stage. We can not reduce this to a sentiment or an emotion.
A Value is easy to declare, but very difficult to live.

it is in childhood that we begin to learn to be ethics.
moral education needs the post-formal stage and also the metasystematic reasoning, though this is not enough.

Answer21:

I found your description of "time" as a value in Dar es-Salaam quite interesting. It reminded somewhat of "time" in Brazil, at least the Northeast where I've done research, which is also somewhat more casual and where punctuality is not as highly prized or rigidly adhered to, at least in nonprofessional interaction, as in Northeast American and Western Europe.  It also reminds me of my impression of "time" as a value in Israel, which is or at least was also more casual than here in North America.  So, here we have three different societies--Tanzania, Brazil & Israel---operating on different economic bases, etc., all with a more casual, less rigid conception of and value placed on 'time'.  So, is something else at issue?

Further, could it be that the material conditions that you described in Tanzania help explain the long-term societal development of such values whereas the value-beliefs help the individual come to accept them and thus sustain them over the short-term, i.e., from one generation to the next.

A somewhat different point, about "explanations", which is perhaps related. Many years ago Elliot Turiel brought to my attention Solomon Asch description's of the Inuit [Eskimo] practice of putting the elderly and infirm out to sea.  Asch made the point that this was consistent with their beliefs about the afterlife and did not indicate a lesser value on the value of life.  One day I was sharing this with a colleague, who said, yes, but it's a culture of scarcity where getting rid of the nonproductive may be economically functional. 

Thus, when we "explain" a cultural practice, we need to keep separate different kinds of explanations, including (a) how the practice may function to help the society survive and (b) what the people in that culture belief, and further to use Elliot's term, the construals of the situation that support and make sense out of that cultural value.

Answer22:

It does invite misconceptions to approach a value foreign to oneself by means of one's own culturally acquired values. Functionality is a Western value that is far from universal. Cultural values do not exist for the purpose of their function. I am reminded of two incidents, one firsthand and one secondhand.

The secondhand one was a comment by a colleague who had spent several years working in Muslim countries. He reported that he had spent two or three frustrating years trying to have a satisfying conversation about purpose or goal-related behavior with his Muslim associates before he came to the conclusion that he had no common ground with them on which to base such conversations.

One day in the produce section of a grocery store I saw a bearded man in a turban picking up cherries one at a time to select the ones he wanted to buy. I approached him and commented, "It takes a long time to select a pound of cherries that way." He replied, "Ah, but that's all there is, is time."

It is an illusion to imagine our educations have freed us from our cultures. In many ways, they have deepened our immersion in them.

Answer23:

But one of the consequences of the introduction of new social and economic systems is that they bring their own implicit values. Industrial systems bring a demand for technical efficiency, coordination, and so on, and accommodation to that demand institutes these values. Capitalist industry is even more driven by its own values. My own (limited) experience of Muslim working culture was in an international bank in Cairo, where I was a business process consultant. The flavour was quite different from the banks in the USA or Europe, yet unmistakably the flavour of a bank, with quite clear purpose- and goal-driven behaviour, and basically the same functional criteria of profit, turnover, operational efficiency, and so on. Praying 5 times a day (which many of the staff, including senior management, did) made no difference. Conversely, the fact that tends of millions of European office and factory workers are Muslims has made no discernible difference to business culture or practice there.

But I suspect we are quite a long way from the purpose of this mailing list now, even though this is all quite intelligible in Piagetian terms!

Answer24:

The model of hierarchical complexity absolutely separates the hierarchical complexity of actions from their content.  Many things affect content.  That is why time varies not only across cultures, subcultures, and individuals but within.  The one thing that affects stage more than anything else is education.  There is lots of evidence that support, practice and reinforcement of new stage behaviors increase the rate of stage change. They might effect the terminal stage as well.  There is evidence that the kind of education makes a difference.  Higher stages seem to require non-authoritarian instruction.

Piagetian stages have fallen out of favor lately for a number of reasons. But they are the one area of Piaget's and Inhelder's work that has held up-- Not all their assumptions about stages and their underlying logic but the stages themselves.

Answer25:

The late work of Piaget and Inhelder is related to process: the movement of one stage to another and not on stages. Stages are merely descriptive and a preferred term is "levels." Too much emphasis on stages in textbooks can turn off students to Piagetian theory.

Answer26:

Depends.  It turns out that hierarchical complexity accounts for much more than child development.  It allows for comparative animal cognition, smart neural networks, a clear theory of social stratification in highly educated societies.  Uneven development explains crime and terrorism

Lots of students are interested in these topics.