Chapter 9

Moral Development: Between Principles and

Sentiments

As we saw in chapters 5 and 6 the child's

acquisition of the medium of the language of the
culture in which the participants exist invite
shifts from relating to others in immediate
reciprocity to modes of mediated relations to
others as characters in narratives and as objects
for conscious reflection in terms of principles.
There is a complementarity between the modes of
immediate and mediate understanding. Both are
equally essential to human beings as sentient and
social participants in the world in which they
live and co-construct. This complementarity is
relevant to the issue of moral development and
moral understanding. In the immediate modus of
dialogic and empathic closure one may feel
directly the lifeforms of others in the
reciprocal network which they mutually constitute
and which makes them participate in each other.

This provides the ground for moral sentiments. In

the previous chapter it was suggested that the
child's prosociality and capacity to feel care
and concern for the other in need or distress are
rooted in such interpersonal feelings.
But there is also the complementary cultural
ground for morality, brought to bear upon the
child through the processes of socialization and
internalization of impersonal principles. In
modes of reflective awareness and mediate
communication in terms of the values, norms,
symbolic means are offered by the cultural
lifeworld in which the child exists. The child is
invited to seek to in-form and re-form his world
and himself and others in it as objects for
re-presentation and co-construction, narration
and control, emerging as a conscious and
conscientious being.
In the latter domain moral consciousness emerges,
literally together-knowledge of moral demands and
principles, as studied in terms of moral
judgments by Piaget, Kohlberg, and others. The
capacity for making moral judgments when exposed
to an ethical dilemma is in focus of the studies
underlying their theories of moral development.
Piaget takes care to point out that his studies
of moral development concern moral judgment, not
moral behavior or sentiments.1 These
studies concern stages in the development of
mediate understanding, not domains of immediate
understanding. His findings are partly based on
children's replies to questions such as "who is
the naughtiest?", "who should be punished?", with
reference to stories they are told.2 Kohlberg has
followed up with studies of responses to
hypothetical moral dilemmas.3 A famous example is
the dilemma of Heinz' stealing or not a drug that
he cannot afford to buy in order to save his
wife. On this basis he distinguishes three levels
of moral development. The first is a pre-moral
level, involving a centric obedience orientation
and naive means-ends relations. The second is a
conventional level of "good-boy" morality
anchored in social conventions and respect of

moral authority. The third and highest level

involves self-accepted principles of human rights
and justice.4 It is seen to emerge as a top-level
modus of formal reasoning (Piaget) in a
post-conventional manner (Kohlberg).
In the following I shall use the term "P-modus"
for this kind of moral understanding in terms of
impersonal principles and distinguish it from
moral understanding in terms of moral sentiments,
to be termed the "Q-modus", arising from
interpersonal caring in the domain of immediately
felt reciprocity. This distinction relates to
Carol Gilligan's complement to Kohlberg's
findings, based on her replicative and
supplementary studies. I shall also report from a
study of moral dilemma-processing that suggests
that complementary modes of moral understanding
are easily evoked within and between adults
processing moral dilemmas. Towards the end of
this chapter I shall consider the kind of moral
principles that may be evoked in totalitarian
logic and the way in which such a monolithic
perspective may invite submittance.

Moral development through internalization of

principles

Theories of moral development tend to conform to

the ideal of enlightening brought forth by the
rationalistic philosophers. They are consistent
with the view of ascending path towards social
reciprocity and responsibility that comes with
rational enlightening and internalization of
moral principles.
While concerned with the emotional and sexual
aspects of development, even Sigmund Freud
asserts such an ascending path towards
rationality and reciprocity. It involves the
increasing involvement of the reality principle
and the fully development of the Superego

representing the morality of the culture, even

though Narcissus continues to play a certain role.
In sociology, Jrgen Habermas who otherwise
insists on an intersubjective frame of reference
for communicative action and rejects monological
perspectives,5 follows in part Freud, Piaget and
Kohlberg in his identification of stages in moral
development and ego identity.6 There is natural
identity, generalized pleasure and pain, and only
incomplete reciprocity in a near-symbiotic manner
during the first stage of moral consciousness
development. Complete reciprocity is reached at
the final and rationalized peak.
Another theoretician in sociology, Talcott
Parsons, also considers that reciprocal
alter-orientation emerges through a culturally
mediated process that transforms the original
nature of the child's mind. In his general theory
of action, written with Shils, Tolman and others
in social and psychological theory, Parsons
proposes that the complementary relation between
the orientation of the actor as ego and the
expectation of the other as alter is a relation
of double contingency of intentions and
expectations.7 In line with Morris' suggestion
that the organism does not become a person until
certain symbols are operative in the individual,
Parsons considers early socialization to destroy
the primordial organization of the child, such as
it is (monadically conceived), replacing it by
such cultural and symbolic mechanisms.8
In contrast, the present thesis entails, in line
with its implications considered in chapter 6,
that this primordial organization is dyadic and
reciprocal. Even though it may be perturbed and
suffer collapse through interactional
experiences, and comes to be complemented by
domains of symbolic and mediate understanding, it
remains a ground throughout life for relating to
others in immediate reciprocity. It can be seen
to provide a ground for moral sentiments (in the
Q-modus) complementary to the impersonal moral
principles (in the P-modus) that are acquired in
the process of socialization and development as

studied by Piaget, Kohlberg and others.

Piaget describes the child's development in terms
of a necessary sequence of stages. He focuses on
cognitive modes of operations and the way in
which they also come to be reflected in moral
judgments. According to his theory the child will
only be able to take the other's perspective
after a long process of de-centration of its
original ego-centric point of departure, passing
from the initial sensorimotor stage (0 - 2 years)
through the preoperational and concrete
operational stages (2 - 7; 7 - 11 years of age).
The centric self-regulating organization of the
infant that evolves during the first stage
permits it to relate to objects in its periphery.
Feelings are focused only on own body and
operations, since a distinction between the I and
not-I or others is required for a shifting of
emotional and cognitive centration to occur.9
Towards the end of the first 18 months the centre
is shifted sufficiently for the child to see
herself as an object in a world of enduring
objects, which also includes other persons as
objects with enduring qualities. She begins to
operate with a primitive symbol system and can
relate operationally to objects by virtue of her
schemes for enduring objects. But she has no
scheme for relating to the perspective of another
subject. When she begins to talk, her speech
reflects her initial egocentricity, which lasts
through the preschool years. She will tend to
attribute her own perspective to other until the
concrete operational stage (from about 7 years of
age) when she will be able to think in terms of
different perspectives.
Gradually, after a long elaboration of new
structures in the course of an epigenetic spiral
of constructive development in which genetic and
social participatory constituents play their part
will the child come to reach a state where she is
able to take complementary perspective of the
other as a subject sharing intersubjective
understanding. Through a socialization process of
steadily increasing de-centration she finally

overcomes the initial egocentricity.10 It means

an increasing degree of de-centration until the
initial egocentricity if finally conquered upon
reaching the epistemic, moral and aesthetic
level.There is a transition from a stage in which
the child's sense of moral duty is heteronomous,
with conflict between egocentrism and moral
constraints from the outside conflict. This is a
stage of moral realism, where the spirit of the
moral law is observed in a literal sense
irrespective of persons and relations. But as the
capacity for mutual respect towards other
individuals emerges, a stage of autonomous regard
for moral rules as products of group agreements
and cooperative means is reached. While at first
relating to moral values and moral authority in a
unilateral and absolutistic manner, the 8- to
12-year-olds will exhibit a mutual, reciprocal
and relativistic respect. This presupposes the
assimilation of the moral norms of the society in
a manner that constructively transforms these
standards from external sources of demands to
internal principles of the self, enabling
reciprocal considerations of others in a
reflective manner.
The latter relates to what Kohlberg terms the
post-conventional level.11 Only during late
childhood and adolescence is the child able to
see itself in a-member-of-society perspective,
and makes judgments from awareness of how self
and others fit in a social order of things. The
final stage is reached when self is perceived as
a member of a multiplicity of social contexts in
a prior-to-society perspective.

Complementary modes of moral evaluation?

The findings underlying Piaget's and Kohlberg's

theories of moral development are based on the
child's linguistic and cultural competence to

respond to adult questions. The key to the

development is the initially attributed
ego-centricity to the child which prevents it
from taking the other's perspective, and which
gradually comes to be de-centered. This relates,
however, to de-centration in a mediate sense in
relation to the adult culture in terms of which
the stories are told. The socializing process of
gradually learning how to imagine situations and
reflect in terms of perspectives of characters in
a story, as told by adults, may deserve the term
"de-centration", if taken in the sense of
reflection in terms of the culture mediated to
the child. It may apply to the child's lacking
the cultural means for imagination,
interpretation, and expressions in terms of an
adult storyteller in artificial contexts.
It is difficult, however, to attribute
egocentricity in an immediate sense to a child
that can engage in reciprocal interaction, and
reacts an actual other, child or adult, in need
or distress, in a way that indicates concern and
want to help. True, the child's inability to
interpret the investigator's situational set-up
or story-telling may be termed "egocentricity",
but relative to the investigator's culture to
which the child is partly a stranger. It may
apply to the child's inability to understand the
investigator's story-telling or situational
set-up. It may even apply to the investigator's
inability to "de-center" and take the child's
perspective in the lifeworld in which the child
exists. But it need not apply to concrete
situations in which the child is involved in
interaction with actual others, inviting care and
altruistic concern.
As we have seen, actual caring conduct by
children indicate a kind of altruistic and caring
concern also before the child acquires the
cultural means of expressing themselves. In
chapter 6 findings and case reports on infancy
and early childhood have been referred to that
suggest prosocial and altruistic behavior.
Gestures and actions in direct reciprocal
interaction may be taken to reflect a naturally
ground for a complementary kind of morality to

the kind considered by Kohlberg and Piaget.12 In

view of replicative and modified studies of
children's understanding, Piaget's theory of
cognitive development and his attribution of
"egocentricity" to the child are subjected to
modification and criticism - first by Lev
Vygotsky, and later by researchers within and
outside the neo-piagetian tradition (for example,
Margaret Boden, Margaret Donaldsen, Karsten
Hundeide, Ragnar Rommetveit, Hermina Sinclair,
Jan Smedslund..............).
In terms of the present thesis, the domain (D1)
of immediate reciprocity allows for the evocation
of sentiments that may be termed altruistic and
moral, even though such sentiments initially may
emerge and be expressed in conduct without
linguistic means to express them with reference
to narratives in some language that is yet to
come. Such a complementary kind may come to arise
from interpersonal experience of communion and
care in primary dyadic and network relations.
That is, a mode of concern for particular others
in interwoven webs of personal relationships and
actualized personal contexts. There appears to be
a basis, then, for asserting that there are
grounds for competition between altruistic
sentiments (the Q-modus) of an immediate
interpersonal nature and moral principles (in the
P-modus) of a mediated impersonal nature.
Are there other empirical grounds for asserting
such a complementary ground of morality, even in
the kinds of moral dilemma studies that Piaget
and Kohlberg introduced? Gilligan's studies of
moral understanding appear to point in such
direction. In a constructive criticism of the
hierarchical bias of Kohlberg's investigations
she has focused on the differences in boys' and
girls' responses to moral dilemmas. On the basis
of interviews with samples of boys and girls, men
and women, from 6 to 60 years, she finds grounds
for a kind of moral understanding that backs away
from the kind of principled morality that can
permit indifference and unconcern. She contrasts
the mode of moral understanding in terms of
hierarchically ordered impersonal principles
about autonomy, justice and rights, with the

alternative mode of contextual and interpersonal

moral understanding and concern for the
particular other in which networks of relations
replace a hierarchical order.
These two different modes of moral understanding
may be called, respectively, the "masculine" mode
or the P-modus, and the "feminine" mode, or the
Q-modus, if one takes care to recognize such
qualities within each sex. Gilligan points out
that generalizing inferences about gender
differences need not be justified:

"The different voice I describe is characterized

not by gender but theme. Its association with
women is an empirical observation, and it is
primarily through women's voices that I trace its
development. But this association is not
absolute...In tracing development, I point to the
interplay of these voices within each sex and
suggests that their convergence marks times of
crisis and change."(Gilligan, 1982:2)13

Gilligan reveals a mode and a domain of moral

understanding and concern which has eluded
theories and studies focused on development as
the acquisition of an impartial and impersonal
moral order. This she finds through interviews
that transcend the constraints of hypothetical
moral dilemmas. But even in the study of the
differences of boys' and girls' responses to
moral dilemma stories, she finds indications of
complementary modes in operation.
The study of moral dilemma-processing to be
turned to below has yielded results that may be
interpreted in the direction of Gilligan's
suggestion that different modes of understanding
can be activated during moral judgments. She
contrasts the mode of hierarchically ordered
impersonal principles about justice and rights
(the P-modus) with the mode of contextual and

interpersonal moral understanding and careful

concern for the particular other in webs of
interwoven relations and responsibilities (the
Q-modus). There may be may be cultural and
socializing grounds for designating, as Gilligan
does, the former as masculine and the latter as
feminine. One should not discard the possibility,
however, that the primordial domain of immediate
reciprocity underlying the Q-modus has a genetic
root in the infant's brain before it begins to
diversify according to gender.14

Moral dilemma processing by adults in dialogue

Can such competition between rival views be found

in adults' processing of moral dilemmas, of the
approximately the same format that has been used
by Kohlberg? A study of adults in pairs
processing moral dilemmas (Brten, 1981)
suggests that different modalities of moral
understanding may be concurrently operative
within and between adult individuals of both
sexes.
This is a study of moral dilemma-processing
within and between persons coupled in pairs and
given the task of being a "jury" on the ethics of
two incompatible courses of action in a specified
situation. Data on task input, initial state and
conversational boundary conditions are used to
specify the input values, initial states and
boundary conditions for an object-oriented
computer model, designed to simulate the
processes and outcomes in the observed dyads.
Students of both sexes were recruited, two at a
time, and shown the laboratory set up and
facilities before they fill out a form on which
each of them mark their positions (in terms of
degree of (dis)agreement) on a number of

normative statements. This defines the initial

position of each of the participants in a
norm-space of relevance to the moral dilemma to
be processed.
A hypothetical moral dilemma is then presented to
each pair of participants. They are given the
task of being a moral "jury" with regard to two
incompatible courses of action, each of which may
be supported on some ethical grounds.
One such dilemma theme concerns euthanasia: A 70
year old hospital patient suffers from an
incurable and unbearable fatal disease. He begs
the hospital physician to be relieved of his
pains forever. In this respect the situation is
the same in two hospital cases where the
physician in charge reacts differently. In one of
the hospitals, the physician, A, refuses and
continues treatment. After three years the
patient dies. In the other hospital, the
physician, B, acts according to the patient's
wishes. His disease is assumed to be the natural
cause of his death.15
The dialogue participants are asked to process
this question: "Who was right, A or B, both, or
none of them?"
A set of norm statements are responded to by the
participants prior to the presentation of the
moral dilemma, and again after the conversation
has been concluded and the judgement delivered.
The dialogues are observed (through one-way
screen; later from the television control room)
and recorded. Those that were videorecorded are
played back to the participants in order to
elicit their self-reflective comments. After they
hand in their judgement(s), they again
individually mark their positions on the set of
norm statements which they initially responded
to.16
(i) A medical doctor's first and fundamental duty
is to help to reduce the amount of human

suffering.

(j) Life is sacred and should be respected in all

forms and under any circumstances through one's
seeking to save life and actively preventing it
from being threatened.

The recorded conversations, as well as

self-reflective participants' comments, show
frequent shifts between domains and different
modes of moral understanding, indicated by their
different ways of reference (Fig. 9.1):

Some such nodal points for shifting during the

dilemma-processing in the conversational dyads
are indicated above, when seen from the
observers' point of view or commented upon by
participants during self-reflective video
playback of the dialogues. Two basic distinctions
are running across the tree of different nodal
points of reference: One is the between the
impersonal and the personal; the other between
the self-reflective unity and the participants as
an it-object seen from the point of view
attributed to the experimenter, and sometimes to

"them", as in the utterance: "Maybe they want us

to..."
The self-reflective participant comments on their
dilemma-processing and responses to a set of norm
statements before and after the dialogue suggest
that different kinds of moral understanding may
have been activated:
"...in replies to questions...things emerge which
you really do not mean, but which are the
products of things you believe you mean, for
example, if you have a special view, politically,
upon family in the society...you may use this
meaning in a particular manner..."
"I argued from myself, from feelings."
"I had the feeling (that) this was very close to
your heart. Was the situation you were in such
that it was urgent to express precisely this? It
wasn't your situation? I so easily becomes
impersonal .. to distant from life.."
"The first time I put less emphasis on relations
to the family than the second time...the first
time,...the family as institution..
the second time...the family, the human beings
you are linked to.."
"The second time I wrote on the sheet, I
emphasized more the relations to the family...If
we had discussed yet another time, then
perhaps...maybe I'd put it differently..."

The above may be interpreted in the direction of

Gilligan's suggestion about different modes of

moral understanding, one mode in terms of

impersonal principles, the other in terms of
interpersonal responsibility and concern. In the
above study both modes were expressed by both
male and female participants. These two different
modes of moral understanding appear to be
complementary to each other,17 competing for
activation in any actual context. If there had
been no competition between contrasting modes,
then one might expect that the moral jury and
jury members would reach some degree of interand interpersonal consistency in the course of
the conversation. The empirically generated
conversation profiles (Fig. 9.2) do not support
this expectation.18

There is no gradual decrease of inconsistency

approaching or reaching a zero-level.19 Examples
of some of the profiles are portrayed in the
inconsistency space diagrams, where the
horizontal axis permitting values for degree of
intrapersonal (in)consistency and the vertical
axis interpersonal (in)consistency. When
portrayed in terms of a phase space diagram (with
degree of intrapersonal (in)consistency on the
horizontal axis, and interpersonal
(in)consistency on the vertical axis), the dyads
exhibit "wings" recurrently extended into the
areas of inconsistency. These profiles are
contrary to what could be expected from cognitive

consistency theory. There is no gradual decrease

of inconsistency and dissent towards a final
zero-level of complete consistency and consent at
which the dialogue could be dissolved.
The conversation profiles and above phase space
portraits appear to reveal an on-going dialogue
between the competing perspectives, A and B,
within and between participants. While this
cannot be expected by entailments of the
principle of cognitive consistency, it may be
accounted for the by the idea of a self-creative
dialogue within and between minds.20
Furthermore, when seen in conjunction with
self-reflective participants comments, such as
exemplified above, they may taken as indicative
of a possible competition between different modes
of moral sentiments or moral understanding. There
may be in operation modalities contextual and
interperson-sensitive moral understanding and
careful concern for the particular other that
compete with modalities of hierarchically ordered
impersonal principles about justice and rights.
The most clearcut judgments were offered by
participants who had been in contact with the
problem situation of authanasia in their own
family, or who related to a political or religous
belief system. The latter also tended to respond
more clearly than others in terms of impersonal
principles.21

When principles invite a model monopoly

The self-reflective participant comments from the

above study indicate the operation of different
voices - a voice of principled and impersonal
concern (the P-modus) and a complementary voice
of interpersonal concern (the Q-modus). These
results may be interpreted to be consistent with

Gilligan's findings. As she suggests, actual

contexts demanding a moral understanding may come
to activate complementary voices in dialogue
within the persons. The actualized profiles of
the moral dilemma conversations suggest that
different voices have been in operation within
and between the participants.
There may be a basis for assuming that the
primordial ground for reciprocal immediacy and
care considered in previous chapters remains as a
source for moral sentiments in the adult that
complement the kind of moral principles that are
mediated and internalized through the process of
moral development and socialization. Implicit in
this internalization is the rational demand for
cognitive consistency inviting resolution of any
dialogue between rival or complementary moral
perspectives.
As we saw above, however, the dialogue within and
between minds is difficult to silence even when a
moral judgment is required. But given a firm
anchorage in a hierarcically ordered
belief-system, the dialogue between complementary
perspectives may be come to be silenced. What
kind of moral behavior may come to be evoked in a
"good" cause in terms of Aristotelian logical
premises that demand judgments in terms of
"either-or" and silence the dialogue between
different perspectives? Consider, for example,
the apparently innocent and moral claim: 'Let
there be a world free of evil!' I shall proceed
to show that when entertained in terms of a
monolithic perspective in a manner that channel
emotions and invites the kind of collapses
considered in the previous chapter, such a moral
dictum can have lethal consequences that defy
comprehension. I shall first return to mechanisms
promoting a model monopoly, touched upon in
chapter 6, and then turn to Herbst's analysis of
totalitarian logic.

The case of Leibniz and Aristotelian logic

One may sometimes submit to a single-minded

perspective to such a degree that it is accepted
as the final truth, as endgltig in a manner
that rules out any rival perspective, including
one's own and that of one's virtual other.
Elsewhere this has been described in terms of
model monopoly (Brten, 1973; 1984, 1988b). For
example, Anna Freud's submitting to the model
monopoly of her father, even though her
discoveries pointed in a divergent direction, is
a case in point. Another example was mentioned in
chapter 6. Leibniz was on the verge of
introducing mathematical logic, but submitted
instead to the syllogistic doctrine established
by Aristotle. The errors he found he attributed
to himself, because according to Russell, respect
for Aristotle made it impossible for him to
believe otherwise.22
Towards the end of chapter 6 we saw how creative
preschoolers may come to silence their dialoging
on own terms when entering school, submitting
instead to teachers, textbooks, and computer
programmes as sources of valid replies to
questions formulated on their model-strong terms,
not the schoolkids' terms. Relative to a
particular universe of discourse, D, a
participant B may be defined as model-weak
compared to another model-strong participant A if
all the elements and relations in D that are
describable in terms of B's perspective are also
describable in terms of A's perspective, which
also permits descriptions of are elements and
relations in D which fall outside of B's
perspective. This idealtype situation is pictured
in Fig. 9.3.
Now, assume for the conversation between B and A
(or a symbolically mediated representation by A)
a closed universe of discourse D for conversation
between A and B that is well-defined on A's terms
and which restrict even the scope of questions to
be asked. In order to engage in conversation B

will seek to take A's mediated perspective, that

is, adopt A's models. As long as they are defined
on A's terms, and A is considered by B to be the
source of valid replies to questions about D, B
may come to submit to the control of A's
perspective. In line with (p1), as long as the
domain is not redefined, B may come to submit to
A's mediated perspective in a way that rules out
any complementary perspective that may be applied
to the universe, including any alternative that B
otherwise might have come up with on his own.
Even though the above is an ideal type situation,
occurrences that resembles it may be seen in the
class room, in the auditorium, and in science and
philosophy (Kuhn, 19??, Brten 1973, 1983,
1984). Submittance to the 'model-strong'
perspective of such a dominant Other has
elsewhere been accounted for in terms of model
power mechanisms that may be operative in the
board room, in the tight communication network,
in socioeconomic planning institutions,23 and
even under conditions conforming to what Habermas
terms 'the ideal speech situation'.24

Certain ideal type pre-conditions may be seen to

further submittance.25 A model monopoly
presupposes

(p1.1) a stable universe of discourse which is

well-defined by the "model-strong" source of
knowledge,

(p1.2) who is present or (re-presented by

symbolic artifacts) in a situation of closed

interaction which excludes other perspectives and
alternative sources of knowledge

(p1.3) than the source which has defined the

domain and on whose premises the knowledge has
been developed, questions may be asked and
replies provided,

(p1.4) acknowledged as the supreme source of

valid replies about the universe in question.26

The instance of Leibniz shows that even the

holder of a pluralistic world view may come to
submit to a monolithic perspective. In spite of
his assuming a plurality of subjective
viewpoints, he appears to have surrendered to the
symbolic power of Aristotle's doctrine.

"He (Leibniz) did work on mathematical logic

which would have been enormously important if he
had published it; he would, in that case, have
been the founder of mathematical logic, which
would have become known a century and half sooner
than it did in fact. He abstained from
publishing, because he kept on finding evidence
that Aristotle's doctrine of the syllogism was
wrong on some points; respect for Aristotle made
it impossible for him to believe this, so he
mistakenly supposed that the errors must be his
own."27

Provided that Russell's recount is adequate,

Leibniz himself appears to have submitted to a
mono-perspective. Submitting to the symbolic

control of a dominant perspective long since

established, he thus leaves it to others, more
than a century later, to come up with an
alternative perspective in the domain of logic.
This may illustrate how even the supreme
intellect who regards reality as consisting of a
multiplicity of perspectives, may come under the
control of a mediated single-minded perspective
that silences the dialogue in his mind pertaining
to a given universe of discourse.28
In the domain of geometry, there is another
classical case of model monopoly, generated by
those who submitted to Euklid's fifth axiom for
some 2000 years before it finally came to be
questioned. When the Russian and Hungarian
outsiders, Lobachevskij and Bolyai (the latter
through his father) reported to Gauss that they
had managed to construct an alternative geometry,
assuming that through any point in a plane there
are two lines parallel to any given line (and not
one line, as stated in the fifth postulate),
Gauss pointed out that he had realized this as
well. But he had not published it. Irrespective
of whether he conforms or not to the case of
Leibniz, his predecessors during two millennia
appear to have submitted to the model monopoly
established by Euklid, who himself need not have
been sure about his fifth axiom, collecting as he
did the accumulated knowledge of his time.
In the case of Leibniz, he may himself have
supplied some of the answer to why he submitted
to Aristotle as the valid source of
unquestionable truths in the domain of logic.
When expressing his view on the nature of
intelligible knowledge he refers to Plato, who,
in Meno, introduces a boy, whom he leads by short
steps, "to extremely difficult truths of
geometry...merely drawing out replies by a well
arranged series of questions. This shows that the
soul virtually knows those things, and needs only
to be reminded...to recognize the truths."29
With such an epistemological belief in the
ultimate (Endgltig) truth it may be difficult
to break a model monopoly and reactive the

natural dialogue of the mind. Otherwise, modes of

negating the promoting conditions (p1.1 - p1.4)
listed above provide possible paths of resolving
a model monopoly:

(-p1.1) Shifting the boundary of the universe of

discourse or re-defining the domain in a manner
which reveals the limit of the monolithic
perspective. For example, if Leibniz had
permitted himself to re-define the domain of
syllogistic principles into a domain concerned
with formal logic, not psycho-logic, that is,
distinct from, or only intersecting with
Aristotle's domain of necessary inferences of
thought, he need not have submitted in the way in
which Russell reports him to have done.

(-p1.2) Opening up for rival knowledge sources

and admitting propositions in the terms of some
alternative language, for example, in a language
that permits values beyond the truth and false
values of Aristotelian logic.

(-p1.3) Developing knowledge on own premises,

taking a boundary position which allows for the
crossing of boundaries and a reflective view on
the relations between the premises of the
mono-perspective and one's own perspective that
has been passivated in the process. This Leibniz
was on the verge on doing.

(-p1.4) Being aware of the kind of mechanims and

epistemology that may promote submittance to a
monolithic perspective as the only valid one, and
of the strange way in which it silences the
dialogue in oneself and others, preventing
creative conversations in the individual and in
the community.

There are many ways of cancelling or breaking

submittance to a monolithic perspective, such as
resorting to a meta-level, for example as
suggested by Gregory Bateson in order to escape
viscious circle of attribution;30 entering a
dialectic modus,31 stepping back for
reflection,32 or, just break off interaction
while developing and consolidating your own
perspective.33
The above modes may be said to re-activate
processes that may involve what Habermas terms
Critical Diskurs, as "inoculation" against
totalitarian logic.

Totalitarian logic
According to Aristotelian logic an object cannot
both have and not have a given property. Implicit
in this logic is also that the characteristics
associated with a given object are permanent.
When a model monopoly is established in some
domain of moral principles, and linked to such a
two-valued logic then moral understanding, and
behavior rationalized in terms of the ruling
moral principles may turn monolithic, and,
ultimately, deadly. Herbst (1976) has considered
the relationship between totalitarian logic and
principles of behavior. In the following I shall
stick close to his own formulations in a first
draft.34 He shows what follows when combined with
this apparent harmless moral injunction:
Let there be a world free of evil!
Herbst lists the these basic axioms in the
Manichaen type logic that may be seen to generate

the logical structure:

1) Persons are good or evil. They cannot be both.

2) A good person can only have good
characteristics. An evil person can only have
evil characteristics.
The following subsidiary axioms may be seen to
determine how the these principles may operate:

3) Personal qualities are permanent and not

subject to change.
4) Personal qualities are identifiable without
errors.

This kind of totalitarian logic has to do away

with any cognitive inconsistency and does not
allow for any uncertainty. To safeguard against
this the fourth axiom may be replaced by this
inconsistency resolution axiom:
4') If a person appears to be the bearer of both
good and evil characteristics (breaking with
axiom 2), then either the positive or the
negative characteristics are
pseudo-characteristics.35)
Herbst finds that practically all modern
totalitarian regimes based on mass support, began
with the idealistic injunction that there should
be a world free of evil, linked to a set of
totalitarian axioms. The two-valued logic invites
one to differentiate between good and evil people
in an absolute and permanent sense. In
Calvinistic theology, for example, the inherent
characteristics are predetermined (Cf.
Weber,????; Hernes, 1989).36 In Stalinist Russia

they were determined by the parents' social

class. In Nazi ideology they are determined by
the parents' race.37
In conjunction, then, with a moral program for
freeing the world of evil, these totalitarian
principles do not only rule out the admittance of
any personal concern. As impersonal moral
principles, ruling out any inconsistent voice,
they become murderous, demanding exorcisement, as
in the witch burnings, or mass extermination, as
by Red Khmer or in the Nazi extermination camps.
How humans can turn themselves into servants of
such causes and instruments of such deadly
organized societal machines defies comprehension.
They involve the converse of the innate human
ground for immediately felt reciprocity
considered in the first six chapters of this
book. Yet we must continue to search for
explanations, at the societal, the interpersonal
and the intrapersonal levels, in the hope that
they may contribute to reduce the probability of
future recurrences. With this, perhaps futile,
hope in mind let us turn to some studies of Nazi
war criminals and to Milgram's electric chair
experiments.

NOTES TO CHAPTER 9

1Piaget, op.cit., p.vii.

2Jean Piaget: The Moral Judgment of the Child
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1932.
3Lawrence Kohlberg: The Development of Children's
Orientations Towards a Moral Order, Vita humana,
6, 1963, pp. 11-33.

4Kohlberg, op.cit., p.15.

5Cf. J. Habermas: Theorie des Kommunikativen
Handelns---sjekk tittel etc...
6J. Habermas: Moral Development and Ego Identity.
I: Communication and the Evolution of Society.
London: Heinemand 1979, ss.69-94.
7T. Parsons and E.A. Shils (eds.): Toward a
General Theory of Action, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1951.
8Roy Grinker (ed.) Toward a Unified Theory of
Human Behavior, Basic Books, New York, 2nd ed.
1967, p.335.
9J. Piaget and B. Inhelder: La Psychologie de
l'infant. Presse Universitaires de France 1966.
10In Piaget's words, "at the level of
understanding,.. the action of the (epistemic)
subject presupposes a conquering of the original
intellectual egocentricity.. in submittance to an
uninterrupted process of coordinations and
reciprocal relations.." J. Piaget:
Strukturalismen. Copenhagen: Hans Reitzel 1972,
p.117.
11Kohlberg.....
12Piaget's theory of moral development, and the
modified scheme of Kohlberg based on intra- and
cross-cultural empirical enquiries, have been
criticized for being centric in terms of gender
and cultural ideal (by Carol Gilligan, Rom Harre,
Susan Sugarman, and others.....). Some of the
underlying assumptions are challenged by recent
findings, for example on prosociality, referred
to in the previous chapters (reported by Nancy

Eisenberg, Marian Radke-Yarrow, Carolyn

Zahn-Waxler, and others). Underlying the view of
moral development in terms of the ability to
resolve moral dilemmas is also the assumption
that formal moral reasoning evoke mechanisms of
resolving inconsistencies. To this assumption I
shall return.
13Caroll Gilligan: In a different voice.
Psychological theory and women's development.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982.
14Cf. Ann Gibson (1991) in Science vol.253:
956-959: "The brains of human babies are the same
size until age 2 to 3. After that, male brains
grow faster until age 6, when the full brain size
is reached. Many researchers think this pattern
reflects the fact that the basic structure of the
brain is female and it is modified when male sex
hormones kicks in. She refers to Doreen Kimura,
who states: "There is a large body of evidence,
maily in rodents, indicating that the default
brain in mammals is female, and that the
androgens must be present very early in life to
maskculize both genitalia and brain"
(Encyclopedia of Neuroscience).
15This dilemma on euthanasia was presented and
processed by students in the beginning of the
1970s. But the issue is still relevant. In a
recent inquiry among Norwegian students,
including medical students, Kari Vigeland
(Nordisk psykologi, 1991), finds that 46 % of the
respondents considered it morally acceptable for
the doctor to actively commit euthanasia through
giving a deadly injection to a suffering patient
begging for it towards the end. As in the above
study religions students are more restrictive.
16Five alternative responses to each of 34 norm
statements are allowed for, ranging from strong
rejection to strong support. Below are listed two
examples of norm statements of relevance to the
euthanasia dilemma:

17See C. Gilligan: op.cit., and Carol Gilligan:

Adolescent Development reconsidered, Prologue in:
C. Gilligan, J. V. Ward, and J. Mclean Taylor
(eds.): Mapping the Moral Domain, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988,
pp.vii-xxxiv.
18While each dyad was given the task of being a
"jury" that were to reach a judgement upon the
rightness or wrongness of two incompatible
actions, A and B, and, hence, a task that invited
them to make up their minds through resolving the
intra- and interpersonal inconsistencies that the
dilemma might evoke, the empirical profiles and,
in part, even the judgmental outputs, indicate
that other mechanisms may have been in operation
within and between their minds. Given the
judgement task, it was expected that as the
conversation in the dyad proceeded, the degree of
intra- and interpersonal inconsistency would come
to be diminished or resolved as the "jury"
reached its verdict. This is what would be
implied by the principle of cognitive
consistency, and mechanism of this kind were
implemented in a computer model for simulation of
the processes. The results point in another
direction. The consistency profiles generated
upon finding the implemented inconsistency modes
of the model inadequate for some of the systems
released from high inconsistency, reveal an
oscillating inconsistency pattern that re-creates
itself.
19It is possible that the profiles, when values
are specified on strength and distance, may
conform to a description in terms of
fractals.............
20One should, however, bear in mind the
inconsistency bind that the participants of the
moral juries were caught in, even though they
were asked to try to reach a common verdict. In
addition, the participants were university
students, aware of the professor behind the
one-way screen. As one of the participants
remarked upon reply of the video-record: It would
be embarrassing to reach an agreement to soon,

wanted to show that one were capable of rational

(saklig, sachlich) discourse...
21S. Brten (1981)......See also....S.Brten
(1979.....
22B. Russell: History of Western Philosophy,
George Allen & Unwin, London 1961, p.173
(underlined by me, S.B.)
23Stein Brten: 'The Third Position - beyond
Artificial and Autopoietic Reduction', Kybernetes
13 1984 (No 3),pp.157-163 (Reprinted in F.Geyer
and J.van der Zouwen (eds.) Sociocybernetic
Paradoxes, Sage, London 1986, pp.193-205.
24J.Habermas and N.Luhmann: Theorie der
Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie. Suhrkamp,
Frankfurt a.M., 1971,p.137.
25Modes of resolving a model monopoly and
reactivation conversation between complementary
perspectives within and between minds follow from
negation of these conditions. Cf. S. Brten,
op.cit. 1983, 1984....
26Cf. Stein Brten: Dialogens vilkr i
datasamfunnet (Conditions for Dialogue in the
Computer Society), Universitetsforlaget, Oslo
1983, ch.8.
27B. Russell: History of Western Philosophy,
George Allen & Unwin, London 1961, p.173
(underlined by me, S.B.)
28Stein Brten: 'Model Monopoly and
Communication: Systems Theoretical Notes on
Democratization', Acta Sociologica 16 1973 (no
2),pp.98-107.
29G.W. Leibniz: Discourse on Metaphysics, XXVI,

in Leibniz Selections, ed. by P. Wiener, Charles

Schribner's Sons 1951.
30Gregory Bateson (In: Steps to an Ecology of
Mind, Paladin, New York 1973) offers the recipe
of resorting to a meta-level for breaking vicious
circles.
31Herbst: Alternatives to Hierarchies, Martinus
Nijhhoff, Leiden 1976, suggests resorting to Zen
Buddhistic modes as a way of resolving the bind
imposed by Aristotelian logic.
32Donald Schon: The Reflective Practioner, Basic
Books, New York 1983.
33Arne Nss (In: I.Gullvg and J.Wetlesen
(ed.): In Sceptical Wonder: Inquiries into the
Philosophy of Arne Nss, Universitetsforlaget,
Oslo, 1982, pp.126-127) recounts how resistance
people in occupied Norway were given the advice
'Do not enter into discussions with the Germans'
as a safety measure against being influenced by
well-trained competent others promoting nazi
ideas.
34In the text I adhere to a working paper by
Herbst (1971) with the title: The Quest for
Certainty: Totalitarian Logic and Principles of
Behaviour, providing the basis for chapter 6 in
Herbst (1976).
35) Collateral decision rule: If uncertainty
arises from the implementation of axiom 4'),
choose the assumption that the person is in fact
evil.
36Max Weber: The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit
of Capitalism,....; Gudmund Hernes: The Logic of
Weber's Protestant Ethics. The latter analysis of
Weber's classical work is a fascinating laying
out of Weber's narrative in terms of the crime
narrative. Hernes also reveals how Weber's basic

reasoning may be interpreted as anticipations of

game-theoretical models.
37The difficulty of creating an all-good world
even invites a higher-order dialectic logic, in
terms of which the "good" by the act of defining
itself concurrently creates its opposite as that
which it excludes. In the end, in practice, the
lower-order logic will be regressed to.

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