Kim Et Sankey 2009 Toward a Dynamic System Approach to Moral Development and Moral Education

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Towards a Dynamic Systems Approachto moral development and moraleducation: a response to the JMESpecial Issue, September 2008Minkang Kim a & Derek Sankey aa Seoul National University, Korea

Version of record first published: 11 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Minkang Kim & Derek Sankey (2009): Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach tomoral development and moral education: a response to the JME Special Issue, September 2008,Journal of Moral Education, 38:3, 283-298

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Journal of Moral EducationVol. 38, No. 3, September 2009, pp. 283298

ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/09/03028316 2009 Journal of Moral Education LtdDOI: 10.1080/03057240903101499http://www.informaworld.com

Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach to moral development and moral education: a response to the JME Special Issue, September 2008Minkang Kim* and Derek SankeySeoul National University, KoreaTaylor and FrancisCJME_A_410322.sgm10.1080/03057240903101499Journal of Moral Education0305-7240 (print)/0305-7240 (online)Original Article2009Taylor & Francis383000000September [email protected]

Is development a concept that properly belongs to mind and morality and, if it does, what accountcan we give of moral development now that Piagetian and Kohlbergian models are increasinglybeing abandoned in developmental psychology? In addressing this central issue, it is hoped that thepaper will contribute to the quest for a new integrated model of moral functioning, called for inthe September 2008 Special Issue of the Journal of Moral Education (37[3]). Our paper argues thatthe notion of moral development is fully justified, though it does not occur via invariant stages.Rather, each child is an emergent self-organising organism in which development is highly variable,dynamic and often non-linear. By viewing each child as a self-organising being and adopting thenotion that moral development is dynamic and emergent from the predilection to value, the paperpoints towards a new account of moral development that opens up new avenues for educationalresearch and moral education in schools.

Introduction

The notion of development has played a major role in education theory, especiallyas theory has drawn heavily on developmental psychology, in particular the manyinsights of Jean Piaget. In moral education, the pioneering work of LawrenceKohlberg has provided a developmental framework for research and pedagogy forhalf a century. In September 2008, the Journal of Moral Education marked the occa-sion of the 50th Anniversary of Kohlbergs doctoral dissertation, producing a SpecialIssue with Don Collins Reed as guest editor. The papers in the Special Issue weresubsequently discussed at the annual meeting of the Association for Moral Education(AME), held at The University of Notre Dame, USA. One prevailing theme in theSpecial Issue papers and, indeed, running through much of the discussion at AME,

*Corresponding author. School of Dentistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, 110-749, Korea.Email: [email protected]

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284 M. Kim and D. Sankey

is captured by Daniel Lapsley and Patrick Hill (2008) when they say that, from theperspective of developmental psychology, the Kohlbergian Standard Model nowlooks a bit shop worn and there is increasing recognition that the field of moraldevelopment is at an important crossroads ( p. 314). The paper by Jeremy Frimerand Lawrence Walker (2008) echoes that thought, saying that moral psychology isbetween paradigms and requires a new paradigm of moral personhood (p. 333); apoint taken further by Reed and Stoermer (2008) who suggest that what is needed isindeed a new paradigm; one that encompasses not only personality but, also, on theone hand, the brain and central nervous system and, on the other hand, interactionand culture (p. 419).

The purpose of our paper is to respond to this sense of unease; the awareness thatthe theoretical ground is shifting below our feet and that something new and compre-hensive is required in the field of moral development and moral education. We offerthe broad outlines of an alternative paradigm. A basic premise of this paradigm is thatmoral development shares the same dynamic processes found within the whole ofhuman development, including cognitive and motor development. Though some-times linear and quantitative, human development is also non-linear and qualitative,continually in flux, changing and stabilising in response to experience and situation.Indeed, we believe that all organic development, including human development, is aresult of emergent self-organisation as the organism interacts with the environment.In short, we argue for a Dynamic Systems Approach (DSA). Though still a minorityposition (Howe & Lewis, 2005, p. 250), over the last 15 years the DSA has increas-ingly made its mark in developmental psychology, building on the pioneering workof Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith (1994) in regard to cognitive and motordevelopment, though not moral development. This paper will therefore attempt torectify this omission, by taking the central concepts of the DSA and applying them tomoral development and moral education.

The title of the Special Issue expressed the hope that we might move towards anintegrated model of moral functioning. We believe that the DSA is just such a model,or meta-theory (Witherington, 2007). By contrast, though the individual papers inthe Special Issue raised central concerns, we feel that as a whole they fell short ofproviding a comprehensive vision of what the new integrated model might be; one,for instance, encompassing brain and culture, as Reed requested above. For example,Frimer and Walkers paper on moral personhood makes no mention of the role ofmemory and its neurobiology in the construction of the self and the dissolution of theself when memory is lost, as in Alzheimers disease. But, as Larry Squire and EricKandel (1999) remind us in their introduction to Memory: from mind to molecules,Memory is the glue that binds our mental life, the scaffolding that holds our personalhistory and that makes it possible to grow and change throughout life (p. ix). Onepaper that does discuss the brain focuses primarily on work from brain scanningtechnologies (Narvaez and Vaydich, 2008, p. 291), while also dipping into otherareas of neuroscience. Given the title of the Special Issue, we wonder if the papershould have focused less on brain imaging and more on critically evaluating whetherand how neurobiology can contribute to an integrated model of moral functioning.

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Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach 285

Imaging can point to areas of the brain that appear particularly active (or inactive)when undertaking prescribed tasks, but this is only of interest if it shows what ishappening there; being told that an England and France rugby match is being playedat Twickenham says little or nothing about the dramas unfolding on that hallowedturf. And, as neuroscientist Steven Rose (2005) has emphasised, in response toclaims by Adrian Raine (2002) that an inability to empathise is often associated withlack of activity in the prefrontal lobes, this evidence provides correlations, not causes(p. 271).1

Despite persistent relativist claims in the literature for the incommensurability ofcompeting paradigms, a previous paradigm may retain validity within certain param-eters. Though replaced by relativity theory, Newtonian mechanics was neverthelessused to successfully navigate the stricken Apollo 13 back to Earth (Chalmers, 1999,p. 174). Similarly, though a dynamics approach marks a quite radical departure fromthe Kohlbergian paradigm of research and pedagogy, that earlier tradition neverthe-less retains its place at one level of description. The adoption of a DSA does not inval-idate what has been achieved before, but it does set it within a particular historicaland conceptual context. Paradigm shifts are often preceded by a sense of crisis in thefield and this may also be accompanied by a felt desire within the relevant academiccommunity to critically examine taken-for-granted philosophical presuppositions(Kuhn, 1970). There is certainly evidence of this in the Special Issue. We begin ourpaper by going back to basics, asking whether the notion of development properlyapplies to minds and morality. That discussion will help to lay foundations for theremainder of the paper; first, as we consider the DSA in contrast to more traditionalapproaches; second, as we explore the model more fully in terms of its central claims;and, finally, as we explore the possibility that the ability to make moral choices andthus develop morally has its roots in the neurobiology of the organism. Though stay-ing close to the core insights of Thelen and Smith, our paper will also draw on GeraldEdelmans (1987, 1989) Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, which strongly influ-enced their work. In this regard, our paper will be building on a previous discussionby one of us on The neuronal, synaptic self: having values and making choices (Sankey,2006).

Finally, in this introduction, a basic procedural requirement of the DSA, as we arepresenting it, is to engage philosophically, psychologically and neurobiologically andto do so in such a way that insights generated in each of the three disciplines operatein mutual modification and none is considered, a priori, to be in the lead. In thecontext of a DSA, philosophers and developmental psychologists must engage morefully than they often have with the findings of neurobiology. At the same time, weneed to make clear that in emphasising the neurobiological underpinnings of moraldevelopment, as we will, we are not advocating a reductionist account which positsthat processes that reside within the organism are somehow more foundational thanthose that reside outside the organism, in the physical and social environments.Moreover, our appeal to organic processes entails a philosophical rejection of machineanalogies that often prevail in the psychological and neurobiological literature,including processing devices or programs that are said to reside in minds and the

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analogy of wiring within the brain. And there is one further caveat: the context forour deliberations is education. Surely, one of the great strengths of the JME over theyears is that, however philosophical or psychological the debate has been, the journalhas never lost sight that its primary focus is education: moral education.

Do minds develop?

If minds do not develop, the notion of moral development and claims that moraleducation should be viewed developmentally are severely undermined. So, do mindsdevelop? In his book, The childs mind, John White (2002) mounts an argumentagainst what he calls developmentalism, by which he seems to mean an unfoundedbelief that minds develop in ways analogous to physical development. Biologicaldevelopment, he says, is concerned with the unfolding of an organism from its initialstate to its mature state, from acorns to mature oak trees, but he questions whetherthese processes are also discoverable in the mental world (p. 71). He says, if mindsare brains, minds can develop, but he then supposes that mental phenomena are notequitable with physical; though he admits that minds are biological in origin, eventhough not in the full-blooded way that developmentalism claims (p. 76). Therefore,we do not need to stop talking about the growth of childrens minds, as long as thisis not interpreted in a biological way (p. 74). The biological metaphor, he says,views children as atomic organisms; thus, a major weakness in developmentalismis its individualism (p. 76). The individualist way of conceiving of the growth ofchildrens understanding implied in developmentalism is at odds with the viewthatlearning must be a matter of social induction (p. 77). Education, he believes, isprimarily a process of concept-acquisition and, as socially-owned phenomena,concepts can only be acquired by deliberate induction into public norms governingtheir correct application (p. 55).

One might be tempted to dismiss Whites position as old-fashioned mind/bodydualism and thus consider it a minority report. However, as noted more fully else-where (Sankey, 2007), there is more to it than that. Whites discussion in The childsmind is primarily indebted to the Forms of Knowledge thesis of Paul Hirst, plus theanti child-centred doctrines associated with R.S. Peters and the influential Londonparadigm. It is therefore not a minority position in philosophy of education. More-over, the distinction White makes between the biological and mental worlds seems tobe posited on the perception/conception distinction, common within analytic philos-ophy, but this does not necessarily entail mind/body dualism, at least not Cartesiansubstance-dualism. Rather, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999) have noted, it is based onthe mistaken view that conception, the formation and use of concepts, is purelymental and wholly separate from and independent of our abilities to perceive andmove (p. 37).

In this paper we will not be concerned with concepts; believing that talk aboutconcepts, whether they are ideas residing as representations in the mind or linked tolanguage, is often unhelpful and can lead to the rather lopsided account of educationas social induction provided by White. We will, however, be relating development to

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categorisation, a biological process closely linked with the biology of perception andfound in all organisms, including prokaryotic bacterial cells. To that extent, at least,development is a biological phenomenon. This suggests that development of mind,including moral development, is not simply applying a biological metaphor, as Whitesupposes, but is truly biological in that it relates to each individual human organism,operating on the basis of its biological inheritance, in accordance with its own predi-lections, in response to the multiplicities of its experience of being in the world. Thus,contrary to White, we affirm the individuality of each child while opposing individ-ualism, by which we mean the practice and doctrine of self-centredness. The indi-viduality of the self and its development has often been overlooked in developmentalpsychology, but it is the fundamental unit of study in the DSA (Thelen & Smith,1994, p. 97). Its basis is in neurobiology; where the mapping of neuronal connectionsis different in each individual brain, including identical twins, as a result of theirdifferent experiences.

Whites opposition to developmentalism has helped to identify a number of issuesthat are central to our paper, but we suggest it does more than that. It provides awarning to all who want to advocate development, including, and perhaps especially,moral development, that we need to be careful with our language. What precisely dowe mean by the development of mind and moral development, what is it thatdevelops and how? All too often the developmental thesis has been analogous to theclaim that from small acorns mature oak trees grow, with predetermined startingpoints and programmed teleological ends; the result of some overarching design builtinto the organism, following stages, responding to schema of one kind or another. Butsuppose for a moment that there is no design, no stages, no schema, just a process ofemergent self-organisation. It is to this possibility that we now turn.

The view from above and the view from below

Many who travel by plane experience seeing a placid blue sea when flying high inthe sky, only to find, when coming in to land, that the sea is very rough andconfused. It is not the state of the sea that has changed, but rather the viewpointbeing brought to it; from above and then below, from afar and then magnifiedwhen near. Thelen and Smith (1994) use the metaphor of viewing from above andbelow when comparing the perspective of much previous developmental theorywith that of the DSA. When seen from above, at one level of magnification, humandevelopment has appeared to many theorists as orderly, progressive, incrementaland teleological (p. xv), guided by some inner mechanism of design. By contrast,they describe how their research into motor and cognitive development forcedthem to see a very different picture, the view from below. From that perspective,development appeared messy, exploratory, opportunistic, syncretic and contextsensitive (p. xvi).

If we now apply this analogy to moral development, Kohlbergian stage theorydescribed an orderly, progressive and incremental process, whereby the infant mindis drawn onward and upward towards the goal of adult moral reasoning. And at one

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level of analysis it works well. Just as there really is a sea below and it appears blue,there are different kinds of moral reasoning and the reasoning appears to developwith age; that recognition is built into the legal code, where minors are not expectedto reason with the same acuity as adults. Given this degree of reality, if one conductsresearch in a certain manner, asking certain kinds of questions and encoding theanswers statistically across groups according to a certain algorithm, one may welldiscover the progressive, stage-like patterns that Kohlberg described. It is one level ofmagnification, but though development appears orderly, where the end-point ofperfectibility is known in advance, a dynamic approach suggests that, at another levelof magnification, moral development will appear messy, unpredictable, individuallyvariable, context-sensitive; the result of emergent self-organisation.

If this is indeed the case, one would expect to see background anomalies in currentresearch findings that may suggest something more is happening than is beingcaptured at present levels of magnification. In a comparison of data collected from asample of secondary school students, university students and adults, first in 1994 andagain in 2007, using a Korean version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) approach ofJames Rest (1979), Yong-Lin Moon and colleagues (2008) could not find differencesin average p (%) scores between the same age groups across the span of 13 years.However, when viewed item by item, a very different picture emerged in the way therespondents exhibited preferences at conventional and post-conventional levels ofreasoning; the aggregated scores led to one set of conclusions that were not supportedwhen the scores were examined item by item.

So the items level of analysis matters, but what if the magnification wasincreased still further to look at individual responses over a longitudinal time span?In one recent and interesting example, presented at the AME Conference inNovember 2008, Yukiko Maeda2 and colleagues reported how they had attemptedto reanalyse data from a 10-year longitudinal DIT study (19721983), originallyconducted by Rest, using a new statistical method, the Hierarchical Linear Model(HLM). The purpose of using HLM was to introduce multi-level analysis, whichhighlights inter-individual differences in moral development. The original regres-sion analysis, based on participants moral reasoning scores and years of formaleducation, had produced an estimated developmental trajectory that showed asteady, progressive transition of development at the group level. However, whenindividual scores were analysed, they exhibited considerable fluctuations from themean, tracking sometimes above and below the mean curve. This variation wasnot apparent at the group average level of analysis. In the presentation discussion,this anomaly was said to suggest a need to examine subjects life experiences atmoments of significant score change, to better understand what causes progressiveor sometimes regressive change in moral reasoning. We agree, but, as we will seeshortly, these fluctuations are accounted for in a DSA as stabilities and instabilitiespresent for each individual at all times, including during data collection. Indeed,from the perspective of the DSA behavioural instability is particularly importantfor understanding development because it is frequently associated with transitionalevents (Howe & Lewis, 2005, p. 249).

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The developing organismepigenetic emergence

Whatever else we may be, including persons with minds, we are also biological organ-isms. This suggests that any account of moral development should at least be consis-tent with our status as biological and neurobiological organisms, though this does notimply that morality is innate, somehow encoded in our genes (Joyce, 2006). Indeed,biologist Brian Goodwin (1994) has bemoaned the fact that in biology the organismhas somehow been displaced by the current reductionist emphasis on genes. Genescertainly play their part, but organisms cannot be reduced to the properties of theirgenes and must be understood as dynamical systems with distinctive properties thatcharacterise the living state (p. 3). Even at the level of bacteria, studies have shownthat genotype and environment do not determine cell state; it can occur spontane-ously without any defined internal and external cause (Sol & Goodwin, 2000,p. 63). Moreover, dynamic systems exhibit properties that are emergent from theirinteractions and not dependent on pre-existing codes (Thelen & Smith, 1994,p. 142). These complex systems therefore exhibit epigenesis: the term used byAristotle when arguing that embryos emerge from the dynamic interactions of theirparts. They are systems with a history, where an increase in complexity is dependenton preceding events and processes; they are systems that are unpredictable, becausethey are highly sensitive to initial condition; they are systems that change over timeand in which novelty can be created.

The science of dynamic systems has its roots in mathematics, physics and chemis-try, but it has since been widely applied to a host of phenomena that are both complexand exist far from thermal equilibrium as non-linear, self-organising, dissipativestructures (the term used by Prigogine (1997, p. 66) to describe systems that drawon a high energy source to do work before giving some of the energy back to the envi-ronment. In the development of this new science, the strange and beautiful patternsproduced in the Belousov-Zhabotinski chemical reaction, played a major role inconfirming that matter far from equilibrium acquires new properties (p. 67). Theseare said to be open systems in which, with a sufficient injection of energy, new andordered structures and patterns of behaviour may spontaneously emerge. All livingstructures are emergent, dissipative, self-organising systems; from the dynamicpatterns of gene activities in developing organisms (Kauffman, 1995) to the behav-iour of ant colonies and the functioning of human brains (Sol & Goodwin, 2000).(We will shortly relate the notion of epigenetic emergence to brain dynamics.)Human behaviour, operating in real time (the here and now), therefore shares a simi-larity with all living systems in that it is maintained and may develop as a result ofemergent self-organisation. The cornerstone of a dynamic theory of development isthis emergent nature of behaviour assembled in real time (Thelen & Smith, 1994,p. 73). Thus:

even behaviors that look wired in or program-driven can be seen as dynamically emer-gent: behaviour is assembled by the nature of the task and opportunistically recruits thenecessary and available organic components (which themselves have dynamic histories)and environmental support. (p. 73)

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It is our thesis that moral development takes its place alongside the development ofhuman cognition and action as a product of epigenetic emergenceassembled by thenature of the task and piggybacking on the human organisms ability to categorise,guided by its inherent predilection to value, in response to a multitude of nuancedenvironmental experiences.

Development and behavioural attractor states

We will have much more to say about this shortly, but first we need to further outlineThelen and Smiths (1994) application of dynamic systems, complexity and emer-gence in understanding the development of human action and cognitionthemessy view from below. It has been common practice in developmental studies toconduct cross-sectional sampling that compares groups of subjects at a number ofdifferent ages. Development is said to have occurred if statistically reliable differencesare found in the mean levels of performance at the different age levels. Though thesestudies have their merits in establishing the parameters of change at particular pointsin time, a dynamics approach is posited on the assumption that: Developmentalpathways can only be deconstructed with individual data, collected longitudinally(Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 73), using frequent sampling points that will track thestate of the collective variable in individual subjects over time (p. 100, emphasisadded). When interpreting this data, development is viewed as the perturbation of anindividuals behavioural attractor states.

An attractor state is an abstract mathematical construct used to describe thestable point into which a given system will preferably settle. For example, ever sinceGalileo was fascinated by the swinging lamps in Pisa Cathedral, it has been realisedthat in an ideal frictionless world a pendulum would settle into a simple harmonicmotion, but in the real world it will gradually run down and stop at a stable state, itspoint attractor. The range through which the pendulum naturally swings afterbeing given an initial push represents its state space. In order to visualise an attrac-tor state within the context of human ontogenetic development (the developmen-tal history of an individual organism), Thelen and Smith use the notion of anontogenetic landscape, adapting C. H. Waddingtons (1966) metaphor of anepigenetic landscape of hills and valleys, where balls (perhaps like glass marbles) aresituated in some of the valleys which represent attractor states. Perturbing the ballsout of the valleys (or basins) requires energy, and balls located in the steepest anddeepest valleys are more resistant to perturbation than those in valleys that areshallow. In terms of this model, development can be conceived as an individualstrajectory through multiple and changing points of attraction, which coalesce anddissolve with time (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 122). Hence, in contrast to stagetheory where development is conceived as progressive and linear, a dynamicsapproach posits that development occurs as a series of changes of relative stabilityand instability (p. 122), where the hills and valleys both deepen and become moreshallow as preferred states emerge and disappear (p. 122) in response to changingexperience and situation. Development is therefore a non-linear process in constant

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flux, held between the poles of stability and instability on an ontogenetic landscapethat is itself in constant flux.

Thelen and Smith (1994) applied this model when trying to unravel the complex-ities of infant leg movement; patterns of kicking and stepping and how steppingadapts when on a treadmill. Thus, kicking and stepping are conceived as havingdifferent valleys and the ability of infants to step on the treadmill is seen as thegradual flattening and merging of the newborn attractor with the treadmill valley(p. 123). But if we now consider these ideas in the context of moral development, thismodel suggests that instead of a trajectory programmed by genetics or normativestages, we view moral development as a trajectory of variability, continuously chang-ing and stabilising in interaction with an ever-changing environmental landscapewhere attractor points both form and disappear over time. Across that landscape, arigidly held opinion or belief may be envisaged as the ball quite firmly held in thetrough of a deep attractor. By contrast, a more loosely held opinion is envisaged asbeing in a shallow valley, or unstably perched on the crest of a hill, ready to fall intoan attractor. Kohlbergs progressive stages of moral reasoning may well describestabilities within moral development, but from the perspective of a DSA this simplyignores the variability and instabilities of belief and action that attend each personsmoral trajectory. This would seem particularly relevant in the context of the roller-coaster ups and downs of adolescence, though it applies at every age phase.3

In terms of research, the DSA requires that we track the stabilities and instabilitiesof an individual subjects attractor states over a longitudinal time-scale that is appro-priate to the scale of ontogenetic change. Individual variability has often been consid-ered an obstacle to detecting group differences in much previous research, but in adynamic view of development the origins and function of variability are absolutelycentral for understanding change (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p.145). And, if develop-ment is indeed epigenetic, enfolding in a contingent and historical fashion, researchinto moral development has to be sensitive to an individual subjects present context,including the research context and the subjects history of past experience and previ-ous development. The notion that moral development is a trajectory of stabilities andinstabilities through a shifting landscape of behavioural attractors also begins to raiseinteresting questions for teaching and learning. For example, if the purpose of moraleducation is to aid moral development, should it challenge students to think otherthan they do, perturbing their attractor states, perhaps nudging them from one attrac-tor to another? Or is that a questionable pedagogical practice? Either way, the central-ity of process in the DSA would seem to favour a view of education as process andcurriculum as development, as advocated by Vic Kelly (1999) for example, in contrastto the view of education as induction advocated by White (2002).

Brain dynamics and the epigenetic, neurobiological rudiments of morality

If this account of development is anywhere near the mark, what might be happeningin the brain? One of the great strengths of the DSA is that its principle of dynamic,emergent self-organisation can apply at every level of development, wherever there is

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change and transition, from a microanalysis of neural cells to the behaviour of theindividual organism operating in the context of society and culture. Up to this pointwe have mainly been concerned with the macroscopic level of behaviour, we will nowconsider the brain as a dynamic, epigenetic, self-organising system. But, do we reallyneed to be concerned with the brain; is it not enough to simply talk about the mind?This issue can arouse the passions, legitimately so, if neuroscience is drawn intodebate to give credence to a favoured theory when not integral to that theory (e.g.The Four Components Model in the Special Issue paper by Narvaez and Vaydich),a strategy that can appear somewhat contrived, or if the claims for neuroscience arereductionist and eliminative. We therefore repeat that, from the perspective of theDSA, neither the brain nor genes occupy a privileged status as the motor fordevelopmental change (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 72). The DSA is opposed toreductionism of that kind. In regard to relevance, Marc Lewis (2005) rather nicelyechoed our view when he said:

If our minds were not inscribed in flesh, we would not have to worry about the propertiesof complex systems. But our minds are greatly dependent on our brains, and brains aredesigned by evolution to self-organise rapidly under the sway of experiences and theemotions that color them. Therefore to understand developing minds we need to under-stand developing brains, and the principles of self-organisation provide a foundation fordoing so. (p. 273)

Previously we suggested that moral development can be viewed as an individualsubjects trajectory of variability, constantly changing and stabilising in response toever-changing natural and social environments, and that moral development piggy-backs on the human organisms ability to categorise, guided by its inherent predilec-tion to value, in response to a multitude of nuanced environmental experiences. Webelieve that perceptual categorisation and the predilection to value provide the neuro-biological rudiments of moral development, working recursively in conjunction withthe neurobiology of memory, emotion and meaning. Our purpose in what follows isto broadly outline this basic idea, drawing on Gerald Edelmans (1987, 1989) Theoryof Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS).

Piaget argued for the importance of active, repetitive perception and self-equilibra-tion. He viewed the mind in terms of a dynamic process, where development isthrough construction. Edelman argues, instead, that our brains work through aprocess of selection; a view of learning also advocated by Popper (1994). Thelen andSmith (1994) point out that, for Piaget, the mind is a logical device that mirrors thelogic of the world (p. 161), but, as Richard Rorty (1979) convincingly argued, themind is not the mirror of nature. And, the world does not present itself as readylabelled, rather we do the labelling and categorise our perceptions. Edelman chal-lenges the idea that the mind is pre-programmed like a serial computer and that thebrain works by instruction, how then does it learn and develop?

He believes that perceptual categorisation is the fundamental of learning and devel-opment. He draws our attention to the immense population and variability ofneurons and neuronal maps. These maps connect with sensory receptor cells (of eyes,ears etc.) and also between themselves (maps to maps); a process he calls global

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mapping. Signals between maps go back and forth, constantly, interrelating in exceed-ingly large numbers, in response to internal and external experience; a process hecalls re-entry. In this dynamic process some of the many connective patterns formedbecome strengthened because they possess salience or meaning for the individual,whereas those connective patterns not valued are weakened or die. It is this dynamic,selective process, he believes, whereby the mappings self-organise through reciprocalrelationship and interaction, which accounts for perceptual categorisation.

This process is degenerate. Within moral discourse, degeneracy refers to moraldecline, but in the context of biology it has a more redeeming connotation, referringto the loss of specialisation of an organism or its parts. Neuronal maps are degenerate,to the point that they allow for considerable flexibility and plasticity, but not so thatthey exclude specification. Thelen and Smith cite the seminal work of Walter Free-man and his team when illustrating degeneracy in perception, and we will follow theirlead. In his book How brains make up their minds, Freeman (2000) describes his life-long study of olfaction in rabbits that had been trained to recognise a number ofdifferent odorants (sawdust and banana etc.). These studies revealed a differentpicture of perception from the one generally advanced by neurobiologists and cogni-tivists who hold that an odorant is focusedinto just a handful of neurons (p. 70).His research showed the brain acting as a self-organising dynamic system, wheregroups of mutually excited neurons (Edelmans maps) participate in global over-lapping and inter-relational modification. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recordingproduced a characteristic contour (similar to contours on a geographical map) whenthe rabbit sniffed a familiar sawdust odour. However, when it was then introduced tothe odour of banana it not only produced a characteristic banana contour, a some-what changed sawdust contour emerged as well. As Thelen and Smith (1994) note:This can only happen if sawdust is represented in the [olfactory] bulb not as a fixedstructure or schema but as a dynamic assembly that is always a function of globalactivity (p. 132).

We must pause here for a moment. At the start of this paper we spoke of the needto engage philosophically, psychologically and neurobiologically. We have also beengently critical of the paper in the Special Issue by Narvaez and Vaydich regarding thepapers focus and discussion of neuroscience. Behind this criticism lies a deeperphilosophical concern about the way neuroscience is brought into the discourse ofmoral development and moral education. To come straight to the point, the findingsof neuroscientific research are not neutral and, as we engage with neuroscience, weneed to be aware of just what philosophical commitments the findings we cite arecarrying; commitments that have both guided research and been used in the interpre-tation of its findings. No neuroscientist is more aware of this than Walter Freeman;not only acknowledging his own philosophical commitments, but in showing how hisinterpretation from a dynamic systems and pragmatist point of view contrasts withmaterialists and cognitivists, even when interpreting evidence on which they allagree. We are similarly committed to the DSA and to a non-relativist hermeneutic.

We all have our own values and biases, which takes us back to the brain and thecentrality of a value-bias (what we are calling the predilection to value) in Edelmans

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account of the brain; the ability of the brain to categorise some things (events,experiences) as good or bad, or just better than others, given the current state of theorganism and the environmental context. And, indeed, this is a most ancient ofabilities, found even at the level of bacterial cells. As John Allman (2000) notes:

Bacteria possess highly developed sensory systems for the detection of nutrients, energysources and toxins, and the capacity to store and evaluate the manifold informationprovided by these diverse receptors. The final outcome of this sensory integration is thedecision to continue swimming in the same direction or tumble into a different course.Thus some of the most fundamental features of brains, such as sensory integration,memory, decision-making and the control of behaviour, can all be found in these simpleorganisms. (pp. 56)

Bacteria discriminate between nutrients and toxins and take avoiding action whennecessary. Animals discriminate between the odour of food and the odour of a pred-ator. Without this ability, no organism could survive. So, making rudimentary valuejudgements is the most natural thing in the world. According to Edelman, value isimposed in the brain by the brain and it operates in the global process of synaptic elab-oration and pruning.4 What the brain possesses is not a set of genetically acquiredrules, but rather a value system, physically located in the evolutionary ancient brainstem, which works by sending chemical signals throughout the brain, reinforcingthose connections that have meaning and salience for the individual. Edelman (1989)argues that memory is similarly value-dominated (p. 99) and results from a processof continual recategorization (p. 56); each time modifying previously selectedneuronal groups. Thus no two memories of any given event are ever quite the same.Categorisation and memory are themselves deeply influenced by emotion. A reviewof the role of emotion from the perspective of the DSA can be found in Lewis (2005),but for our purposes we can appreciate the basic idea in the words of Esther Thelenwhen, in 1994, she participated in a BBC Horizon programme with Gerald Edelman.Referring to her research into how babies learn to reach out and grab toys, sheexplained how each baby had to find the solution, trying a whole array of movementsof arms and legs, waving in all directions, until finding, first by chance and then repe-tition, one efficient swipe at the toy, putting it right in the mouth. She then added:

As the baby builds more and more abstract levels of cycles of action through her activityin the world, every action is suffused with value, with some goal that is satisfied. And whatthis means is that even the most high-level, the most abstract kinds of human thinkingare based fundamentally on feeling and value. It is logical but its also emotionalinevery aspect of the way we think.5

Likewise, it is our contention that the highest and most abstract kind of moral think-ing is suffused with value, emotion and feeling. Our native ability as organisms tocategorise our perceptions, coupled with an inborn predilection to value, in responseto salient and meaningful experiences laid down in memory, provides the neurobio-logical rudiments for morality and moral development. Or, we may say, from theinitial predilection to value represented by a diffuse attractor landscape with a fewdeep attractor basins, the child through repeated interaction with multiple environ-ments develops a more complex, differentiated and stable set of attractor basins.

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Then comes adolescence, a time of dynamic stability and instability, when, throughsynaptic pruning and reorganisation the emotions gradually come under the execu-tive control of the prefrontal lobes (Sankey, 2006) as new and deeper attractor basinsemerge. Indeed, the transition through adolescence towards adulthood may repre-sent a loss of degrees of freedom in individual development that can never beregained (Lewis, 2005, p. 266).

To be clear, we are not saying that the whole edifice of social and cultural moralityand moral development are nothing but or can be reduced to perceptual categor-isation and the predilection to valuethat would be absurd. Morality requireslanguage and imagination. But we do say that these basic biological processes, work-ing recursively in conjunction with the neurobiology of memory, emotion and mean-ing, in interaction with the multifaceted environment, provide the rudiments fromwhich the many levels of morality emerge. Methodologically, science is reductionist,but there have always been those in science, including Piaget (Lapsley, 1996), whohave believed that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This is the notion ofemergence, which in its weak form has underpinned the description of the DSA in thispaper. There is a stronger version of emergence, which says that micro-level princi-ples are inadequate for describing a natural systems behaviour, thus challengingreductionisms fundamental creed that life, mind and society are simply derivativestates of matter that reduce to the basic particles and laws of physics. The DSA is notdependent on strong emergence, but if ethical laws emerge at each level of complex-ity, augmenting but not conflicting with laws of physics, it could be, as physicist andcosmologist Paul Davies (2006) speculates, that: Categories such as right and wrongcould possess an absolute (law-like) rather than a socially relative status (p. xiii).Emergent self-organisation in moral development may yet turn out to be more funda-mental than we have supposed.

Conclusion

We began this paper with the modest aim of sketching the broad outlines of theDSA and we are acutely aware that in the confines of this one paper we have not donemore than that. Nevertheless, we hope that what we have provided in this highlyprcised account is recognisably an integrated model that may, in some measure,take forward the mission of the Special Issue of the JME. We have not attempted toreview each paper in the Special Issue, believing the authors are much better placedto do that in light of the model we have provided, but we do issue an invitation to allin the field of moral development and moral education to join with us in exploringthis model as a potential framework for future research and teaching. We inviteresearchers to look again at their data to see whether this model is helpful in providingnew and productive insights. And we invite teachers of moral education to see them-selves as active participants in each childs personal trajectory through a shiftingattractor landscape and to empathise with students when they exhibit shifting stabil-ities and instabilities instead of more stable moral developmental stages that, asteachers, we might prefer.

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And for those in moral education who wish to participate, there is much work tobe done. At the start of this paper we emphasised the need to relate theory to the prac-tice of moral education. For our part, while currently developing the research meth-odology, we are also in the process of writing and testing materials to support theteaching of moral education in schools from the perspective of the DSA.6 Withinstage theory, moral education provides support for the childs development whentraversing from a current to a higher stage of moral reasoning. From the perspectiveof the DSA, though Kohlbergian stage theory may provide a broad-brush account itoverlooks the complexity and messiness of moral development, which, beingemergent and self-organising, is fluid, context-sensitive, non-linear and contingent.The educational challenge is to help the developing child deal with the complexities,the stabilities and instabilities that accompany development, given that, from theperspective of Edelmans TNGS, there is a value component in all learning, memoryand action. The basic process of making value choices does not have to be induced,but may be developed.

For example, the focus group for one set of materials currently being written is pre-adolescence, where the aim is to help youngsters prepare for the many changes andchallenges they will face with the onset of puberty, as they traverse through a shiftinglandscape of attractor basins of moral development. The timing and focus of thelearning are important. All too often the problems of puberty and adolescence aredealt with when the upheavals break in on youngsters and often they are only dealtwith at the level of personal and social problems. The aim of this pack, provisionallycalled Dealing with myself and others, is to engage youngsters, parents and teachers, inunderstanding the transition from childhood to adolescence in advance, while alsobridging the gap between the biological and social dimensions of the emergent self.

Adolescence is a period of dynamic upheaval of physiological, neurophysiological,personal and social change, in which the formation of permanent or semi-permanent attractor basins provides foundations for the adult self. It is a time whenyoungsters have to deal with themselves and others in unprecedented ways, wherenew, powerful and sometimes destructive attractors present themselves. Pre-adolescents therefore need help in preparing to deal with this period of transition, asdo teachers and parents. Partly, this requires an understanding, by youngsters andadults alike, of the biological changes occurring within the body and brain andseeing how these changes impact on feelings and behaviour, which are in constantflux in response to circumstance and the individuals previous history of thinking,feeling and behaving. There is content to be learnt in this regard. But, more thanthat, the pre-adolescent needs to learn how to reflect on and monitor his or her ownthinking, feeling and behaving: what is happening to me and why and how is thisimpacting on my ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad? In short, the DSAapproach to moral education requires, in part, a shift from cognitive to metacogni-tive ways of learning.

The writing of all the materials we are currently preparing is guided by the coreprinciple that runs throughout this paper; that all human development, includingmoral development, is a natural process of emergent self-organisation, as children

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and adolescents interact with the multifaceted natural and social environments thatthey encounter and to which, as human organisms, they intrinsically belong.

Notes

1. For a more extended discussion see Sankey, 2008.2. Our gratitude to Yukiko Maeda for kindly providing a copy of her PowerPoint presentation.3. For reference to the role of the amygdala at this stage of development, see Sankey 2006.4. This is evidenced at the neurobiological level in regard to Long Term Potentiation,

required for long-term memory. During normal low-frequency firing at the synapses, theN-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors on the post-synaptic neuron remain blocked.Long Term Potentiation is induced when the pre-synaptic neuron fires a sufficiently high-frequency tetanus (signal) that unblocks the NMDA receptor channel on the post-synapticcell, allowing calcium ions to enter the neuron. A high-frequency tetanus will be inducedwhen the organism detects a stimulus that is either positively or negatively salient (seeSquire & Kandel, 1999).

5. From the transcript of BBC Horizon programme, The man who made up his mind, transmittedon 24 January 1994.

6. At the time of writing, an Asia Pacific regional centre has been established for the study ofHuman And Moral Development In Education (HAMDIE) from the perspective of the DSA,generously supported by a private research trust in Korea, The JT Park POSCO Foundation,located at Seoul National University, but incorporating the Asia Pacific nations.

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Kim Et Sankey 2009 Toward a Dynamic System Approach to Moral Development and Moral Education

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Transcript of Kim Et Sankey 2009 Toward a Dynamic System Approach to Moral Development and Moral Education