Conceptualizations of Knowledge in Structuring Approaches to Moral Development: A Process-Relational Approach

Abstract

Like other aspects of child development, views of the nature and development of morality depend on philosophical assumptions or worldviews presupposed by researchers. We analyze assumptions regarding knowledge linked to two contrasting worldviews: Cartesian-split-mechanistic and process-relational. We examine the implications of these worldviews for approaches to moral development, including relations between morality and social outcomes, and the concepts of information, meaning, interaction and computation. It is crucial to understand how researchers view these interrelated concepts in order to understand approaches to moral development. Within the Cartesian-split-mechanistic worldview, knowledge is viewed as representation and meaning is mechanistic and fixed. Both nativism and empiricism are based in this worldview, differing in whether the source of representations is assumed to be primarily internal or external. Morality is assumed to pre-exist, either in the genome or the culture. We discuss problems with these conceptions and endorse the process-relational paradigm, according to which knowledge is constructed through interaction, and morality begins in activity as a process of coordinating perspectives, rather than the application of fixed rules. The contrast is between beginning with the mind or beginning with social activity in explaining the mind.

Domain‐general or specific: How is children's understanding of deception socialized?

“…For the most part, these assumptions and their connection to methods are not explicit (i.e., they are presupposed). However, some of these assumptions have been explicitly discussed for moral development in the context of an action‐based approach to knowing and a process‐relational approach to learning and development (Carpendale et al., 2013; Carpendale et al., 2021). The central point of that analysis is that the development of morality is emergent within interpersonal relations.…”

From action to ethics: A process-relational approach to prosocial development

“…Our developmental position contrasts with these current nativist claims regarding infants’ moral competence. Elsewhere, we and others have critiqued such claims from conceptual as well as methodological perspectives (e.g., Carpendale et al, 2021b , c ; Carpendale and Lewis, 2021 ). Here, we briefly reiterate that although these claims of innate knowledge might seem to be based on biology, these researchers do not cite current research in biology and instead what is defining about their claims is the notion of pre-existing moral knowledge or essentialism.…”