“The Four Component of

Morality”

Page | 1
 Table of Content
1. Introduction …………………………………………………………………………………01

2. Neo-Kohlbergianism….………..………………………………………………..01

3. Four Component

3.1 Moral Sensitivity …………………………………..………………….……………………..02

3.2 Moral Judgment …………………………………………………………….………………..04

3.3 Moral Judgment …………….…………...………………….….…………………………….09

3.4 Moral motivation and character………………………………………………………………11

3.CONCLUSION………………………………….………………………………………………14

4.References…………………………………………….………………………………………15

Page | 2
Introduction-
Moral functioning depends upon four components (sensitivity, judgment, motivation, and
character), the Neo-Kohlbergian account of moral functioning allows for uneven moral
development within individuals.

Neo-Kohlbergianism

Kohlberg maintained that moral development consists primarily in cognitive improvement. He

proposed a moral development ladder consisting of three levels of moral thinking:

a. Pre-conventional (Reasoning based on self-interest)

b. Conventional (Reasoning based on conformity to family or peer-group values or other social
norms)
c. Post conventional (Reasoning based on moral principles, particularly justice)

Each level consisted of a higher and lower version for a total of six stages (Kohlberg, 1984).
Kohlberg also proposed an interview-format measuring instrument (Moral Judgment Interview,
MJI) for assessing a person’s stage of moral development (Colby et al., 1987).

The ‘Minnesota Group’ (including Rest, Narvaez, Thoma and Bebeau), together with numerous
thinkers building on their research program, are some- times called ‘Neo-Kohlbergians’. They
are Kohlbergians because they followed Kohlberg in many ways.

For example, they proposed a moral development ladder consisting of three levels of moral
thinking (personal interest, maintaining norms and post conventional), with a higher and lower
version of each. These overlap significantly with some of Kohlberg’s stages. Moreover, according
to both Kohlberg and the Neo-Kohlbergians, the crucial move in moral development is the move
to post conventional reasoning.

The Neo-Kohlbergians are Neo because they departed from Kohlberg in many ways. For example,
they constructed alternatives to the MJI. Their measuring instruments (Defining Issues Test, DIT,
and a later version, DIT-2) present respondents with short scenarios and then ask Likert-scale
questions about these scenarios. The DIT has become wildly popular, perhaps because of its ease
of administration and scoring.

The Neo-Kohlbergian four-component model of moral functioning (FCM). The components of the
FCM are: moral sensitivity (the ability to recognize the morally salient aspects of a situation and
to interpret morally challenging situations), moral judgment (the deliberative ability to determine
which options in a situations are morally required, acceptable or prohibited), moral motivation (the
prioritizing of morality, i.e. the lack of inclinations contrary to morality or the ability to force
oneself to do the right thing despite contrary inclinations), and moral character (the package of
abilities that one needs in order to implement one’s moral choices effectively) (see Figure 1). By
maintaining that moral functioning depends upon four independent processes rather than just one
process, Neo-Kohlbergians implicitly acknowledge the possibility of uneven moral development
within individuals. A person can be advanced with respect to some components and behind with
respect to others. The Neo-Kohlbergians also emphasize the role of affective processes (passions

Page | 3
and desires) much more than Kohlberg did. They view each of the four components of the FCM
as a mix of affective and cognitive process, a mix that contributes to the component’s primary
function (Bebeau & Thoma, 1999, p. 345).

Figure 1. Neo-Kohlbergian four-component model.

of us fall short of this standard. Neo-Kohlbergian account of moral development and functioning,

1.Moral Sensitivity :

The decision depends on the particular facts and on perception.

(Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics)

Neo-Kohlbergians employ an excellent general principle of theory-building to justify their

decision to make sensitivity a separate component. appropriate and deploy this principle further
below. Sensitivity is not the mere ability to see, hear, touch, taste and smell; rather it is a nose for
morality, the ability to recognize situations and aspects of situations as morally charged.

The Neo-Kohlbergians rightly observe that the four components are not completely unrelated. For
example, what a person perceives to be a moral matter is a function of his or her judgment, in
particular his or her moral theory (among other things), and vice versa. One theory may take a
certain fact to be important while a different moral theory may take it to be irrelevant.For
utilitarians, the feelings of others are salient; for egoists, not so much.

The relativity of facts to theories has several implications. First, whether a situation presents itself
as morally charged depends upon one’s moral theory. People using one theory may see a situation
as demanding a choice between right and wrong, while people using a different theory may see
the same situation as a choice among morally neutral options. Moreover, after people identify a
situation as morally charged, they do not examine the situation in a casual, just-taking-in-the-
scenery way. Instead, they interrogate the situation in light of their moral theories. Different
theories prompt different questions. Cultural relativists (people who take acts to be right if and
only if the prevailing culture considers them right) will wonder about the prevailing cultural norms,
for example, but deontologists will not. Conversely, people who perceive the world in certain
ways, either because of their environment or because of their preconceptions, gravitate toward

Page | 4
moral theories compatible with their perceptions. People who live in pluralistic communities tend
toward relativism, for example. Nevertheless, despite the many interconnections between
sensitivity and judgment, Neo-Kohlbergians rightly separate them into different components
because, as Rest says,
An intuitive understanding of these four components may come more easily if we talk about
four different kinds of moral failure—that is, different reasons why a person might fail to behave morally. (Rest, 1994,
p. 23).

To behave morally, several processes must be functioning well. Failure is not typically a total
breakdown of all of these processes, but rather results from a malfunctioning of any one of these
processes. Even in cases of success, there exist different degrees of sophistication for different
components. In particular, judgment and sensitivity do not develop in lockstep despite their mutual
influence. Some people are generally sensitive to what is morally important about situations,but
judge badly on the basis of these features. Other people have the opposite tendencies; they observe
little, but judge well about what they do notice.

Sensitivity and judgment often develop at different rates within the same person. The Neo-
Kohlbergians provide support for the distinction between sensitivity and judgment.

For example, the Dental Ethical Sensitivity Test and the DIT (which measures judgment) were
given to 18 cohorts of dental students as part of an assessment of an ethics program. Correlations
were low, indicating that sensitivity and judgment in these students developed independently
(Bebeau, 2001, pp. 181, 185). In general, the Neo-Kohlbergians use the following principle to
distinguish components of the FCM.

Individuating Principle: When two different processes are necessary to moral functioning, and develop
at different rates, then these processes deserve to be separately identified in a model of functioning, even
if they are interrelated processes.

To begin, the sensitivity component has sub-components which are also obviously necessary,
develop at different rates, and therefore should ideally be measured independently of each other.
Using the Individuating Principle above, giving the three examples.

One aspect of moral sensitivity is the ability to recognize morally problematic situations when they
are encountered. I think that this ability is often unremarked upon and underdeveloped, perhaps
because the difficulty of recognizing moral problems is underappreciated. Many people are rather
oblivious to immorality. They do not see any reason to think morally about what they are doing; it
is just business as usual, or just what everyone does, or just what comes naturally, etc. They know
that lyin’, cheatin’ an’ stealin’ are generally wrong, but they are poor at identifying examples of
lyin’, cheatin’ an’ stealin’.

A closely related aspect of moral sensitivity is the ability to recognize morally relevant features of
a situation. Although they evaluate situations from a moral perspective, many people have trouble
applying their moral theories correctly because they mis-describe salient facts. For example, they
don’t recognize that taking supplies from the office without permission or downloading sentences
into a term paper without citation constitute theft, because they don’t notice that the supplies and
sentences are owned by the company and author, respectively. Or even though they know of the

Page | 5
possibility of date rape, they don’t recognize that their actions constitute rape because they hear
‘no’ as a tease or temporization rather than as a refusal.

An important sort of sensitivity is social intelligence (Cantor & Kihlstrom, 1987). This is the
package of cognitive and affective abilities that concern the social world and enable people to deal
with others individually, in groups and in organizations. What do other people in the situation
believe, desire, feel, etc.? How do the social groups in which they are embedded and the relevant
social organizations function?

This information is typically crucial to moral choice, yet the ability to get into the heads of other
people and understand group dynamics and organizational structures is non-trivial and uncommon.
People are hindered by the bare fact of otherness, by differences in gender, class, religion, race,
culture, upbringing, etc., by sociological naivete´, and perhaps most commonly by simple self-
centeredness.

2.Moral Judgment :
That we must act according to the right rule is a common principle and must be
assumed. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

Judgment is at the core of the Neo-Kohlbergian approach. While Neo-Kohlbergians acknowledge

that excellent moral judgment alone is insufficient to reliably produce moral behavior, increasing
sophistication in moral judgment is arguably the most important factor in moral development
according to the Neo-Kohlbergians. At any rate, it is the one most clearly measured by the DIT,
and is probably the component of the FCM that is easiest to improve through teaching.

Everyone agrees that judgment consists in applying moral principles, ideas, values, whatevers to
particular situations, but disagreements emerge as soon as one tries to say anything less vague.
Moral theories are the most general level of moral beliefs. They are accounts of which sorts of
acts are right and wrong, plus accounts of why these acts are right and wrong. The term ‘moral
theory’ may suggest some baroque, humongous, precise, conceptual edifice.

The theories that most people actually use are quite simple and vague. They can be well
summarized in a few sentences or even phrases (e.g. greatest good for the greatest number,
morality is relative, look out for #1, what would Jesus do?). To have a moral theory does not imply
that one always uses that theory when thinking about morality, but only that one can use that
theory. It is available to its possessor. Neo-Kohlbergians use the term ‘schema’ to refer to the
highest, most general level of judgment.

The Neo-Kohlbergians what actually combines with a grasp of particular situations delivered by
sensitivity is not highly general moral theories or schemas, but something more specific.
Intermediate concepts are the sort of concepts used in professional ethics (e.g. due process,
informed consent, intellectual freedom, conflict of interest). Naturally, different moral theories (or
schemas) correspond to different clusters of intermediate concepts. Concrete rules are the
application of intermediate concepts to particular situations. They are the sort of rules captured in

Page | 6
codes of professional ethics. Since moral theories (or schemas) are too general to be applied
directly to situations, moral choices are made by applying concrete rules to particular situations
structured in terms of intermediate concepts.

The relationship between moral theories and moral choices is puzzling. On the one hand, moral
theories seem to be very firmly held. Like other fundamental beliefs, a person’s underlying moral
theory seems to change very rarely, and with great difficulty and pain. As anyone who has tried to
persuade people to change their moral orientation to the world knows, people typically hold fast
to their fundamental normative beliefs despite evidence and arguments, stories and tears, etc. One
can persuade an interlocutor to abandon this or that concept or rule, but as one probes deeper and
deeper, closing in on his or her moral theory, resistance stiffens. Interlocutors are more likely to
storm out, check out or act out rather than cast out their fundamental moral beliefs. On the other
hand, the choices people make about concrete cases do not typically seem to reflect any single
moral theory. Rather, they seem quite inconsistent. Sometimes people choose as if they were
deontologists; other times as if utilitarians; yet other times as if egoists, and so on. How can this
be? There’re three partial explanations which, when combined, explain this stable/variable
phenomenon. Each of my partial explanations depends upon a different sort of uneven moral
development.

At first explanation depends upon the fact that human life involves interrelated yet probably
incommensurable values (safety, pleasure, respect, etc.). Corresponding to these values are
overlapping collections of situations called spheres of human life. One sphere consists of situations
primarily concerned with physical risk, another with sensual pleasure, yet another with reputation,
etc. A disposition to see, feel, think and act well within a sphere is a virtue (Nussbaum, 1988).
Each virtue governs a different sphere and a different sort of value. Courage is the disposition to
think, feel and act well in situations involving risk; temperance is the disposition to think, feel and
act well with respect to pleasure; and so on. Now philosophers tend to obsess about the ideal of
the unity of virtues, but they acknowledge that real people are unevenly virtuous (Badwahr, 1996;
Russell, 2009). People do not have completely good or bad characters. Rather, a theory of moral
functioning must allow for the possibility of being virtuous with respect to some sorts of situations,
and less than virtuous (continent, incontinent or vicious) with respect to others. We all know people
who do well with bodily risks yet badly with sensual pleasures, for example, and others who do
well with pleasures, yet badly with anger. We might call the former courageous yet intemperate,
and the latter temperate yet irascible. ‘Some who in the dangers of war are cowards are liberal and
are confident in face of the loss of money’ (Aristotle, 1984, p. 1760).

It is perhaps theoretically possible for a person to be cognitively sophisticated across all spheres,
yet act better in some spheres than in others because he or she experiences great temptation in only
some spheres. But because of the intertwining of cognition and affect, almost all people vary
cognitively when they vary affectively. They theorize, reason and/or perceive better (or worse)
when faced with situations evoking better (or worse) passions and/or desires. Passions and desires
vary by sphere. Some spheres involve anger, others fear, yet others sensual desire, etc. An
individual may be at different levels of cognitive moral development within different spheres. In
particular, he or she may use more sophisticated moral theories in some spheres of human life and
less sophisticated ones in others. Thus, a person may flit from theory to theory as he or she
confronts moral challenges in one sphere after another, while remaining a consistent adherent to a

Page | 7
single moral theory within each sphere. He or she is not abandoning one moral theory for another,
changing his or her mind frequently and easily, but rather using different, firmly held, unevenly
developed tools for different sorts of problems.

Second explanation of the stable/variable phenomenon is this. People in our society are familiar
with the intuitions underlying at least three very different, sophisticated moral theories
(utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics). Technically, none of these three moral theories can
be combined with either of the other two. They have incompatible assumptions, methodologies,
etc. However in practice, different situations (even within the same sphere) seem to demand the
different underlying insights of the three sophisticated moral theories. To accommodate this fact,
refined versions of each theory find ways to incorporate the insights of the other two so as to deal
well with the situations that seem to demand its competitors.

For example, consequentialists might allow that the categorical imperative is a good rule of thumb.
Similarly, deontologists might take the principle of utility, suitably bounded by respect for persons,
to be a good strategy for exercising one’s duty of beneficence. But the epicycles that allow each
theory to incorporate the insights of the other two are numerous, diverse and complex. A
reasonable approximation is to use different moral theories in different sorts of situations, despite
their technical incompatibility. This is what sophisticated amateur ethicists do. Although they use
all three theories, they actually do not change their theory commitments. One might describe them
as using a single, multifaceted, technically self-contradictory yet sophisticated moral theory,
namely utilitarianism-deontology virtue- ethics. (Sophomoric theories are similarly fused in the
minds of sophomoric thinkers.) Thus it may seem as if they are flitting from one theory to another
when actually they hold a single, compound, internally inconsistent theory throughout.

Third explanation is that people’s concrete rules, intermediate concepts and moral theories all vary
independently of each other. That people use rules and concepts which do not match their theories
is obvious. When people move to a more advanced moral theory, their intermediate concepts
and/or concrete rules often lag behind. They end up with a good theory that they can’t apply very
well. One way in which this comes about is through taking an ethics class. As all ethics teachers
know and rue, students often buy into a new theory without accepting or even acknowledging its
implications. Conversely, a person may move to more advanced intermediate concepts and/or
concrete rules while his or her moral theory lags behind. Such people make morally better choices
than they formerly did, although they cannot justify their choices using their moral theories. One
way in which this comes about is through a sort of stubbornness or inertia. People applying their
theories to concrete cases often end up with results that seem counterintuitive, incompatible with
other beliefs, unwanted, etc. When they run into such snags, they often modify their rules but hang
onto their theories. Rules, concepts and theories can get out of alignment in many other ways, too.
Thus, from the Individuating Principle of the previous section, it follows that moral theories,
concepts, and rules are sub-components rather than just levels of generality.

Since these three sub-components vary independently, a person may use the concepts and rules
that go with relativism at one moment, and the concepts and rules that go with virtue ethics at the
next, and so on, while his or her deep moral theory remains utilitarianism throughout. What
concepts and rules people use in moral decision-making is a function of their moral theory, but
also a function of many factors in their experience, affect and environment. Quick shifts from one

Page | 8
set of concrete rules and intermediate concepts to another are compatible with stability of moral
theory.

First suggestion explains the use of different theories of different levels of sophistication in
different spheres, and my second suggestion explains the appearance of different, equally
sophisticated theories in the same sphere. The third suggestion explains the appearance of both
sophisticated and unsophisticated theories within the same sphere. That individuals change their
moral commitments from moment to moment within a sphere throughout the day need not be
supposed. Individuals can appear as if they are shifting from one theory to another without actually
changing their theory-commitments.

Do Neo-Kohlbergians offer a different explanation of the stable/variable phenomenon? If so, it

will hinge upon their view of the most general packages of interrelated beliefs, expectations,
memories, models, concepts and cognitive fields. calling these packages ‘moral theories’, and
consider them to be firmly entrenched structures within the mind. Neo-Kohlbergians call them
‘schemas’. Do they think of them differently?

Someone might deny that people ‘have’ schemas, maintaining instead that a schema is an
abstraction from the concepts and rules that a person applies. Schemas are extrapolations which
bring coherence to people’s moral choices rather than actual mental entities. The different concepts
and rules deployed in different situations are the actual moving parts in the mind; they fall into
clusters which are merely modeled by schemas.

This schemas-are-abstractions move would dissolve the stable/variable problem. People do not
switch their allegiances to schemas moment by moment if they have no allegiances to schemas at
all. On this move, there would be no need to explain the mismatch between the schemas people
profess and the choices they make.

But this move faces a problem. Schemas are postulated in order to explain certain things. In
particular, while people’s moral decisions may be explained by their intermediate concepts and
concrete rules, these concepts and rules are unintelligible on their own. Due process, informed
consent, intellectual freedom, etc. have meaning only insofar as they are embedded within the
context of more general theories, and they mean different things within different theories. The
general theories which imbue concepts and rules with meaning are schemas. But in order to have
causal efficacy, schemas must be real structures within the mind. Otherwise, they cannot explain
the meaningfulness of concepts and rules.
In any event, Neo-Kohlbergians do not consider schemas to be mere abstractions. Instead,
they take schemas to dwell within the mind, ready to be deployed like tools in a tool chest.

Schemas are general knowledge structures residing in long-term memory. … A schema consists of a
representation of some prior stimulus phenomenon and is used to interpret new information (sometimes referred to
as “top-down” processing). Schemas are evoked (or “activated”) by current stimulus configurations that resemble
previous stimuli. … In short, schemas facilitate information processing. (Rest et al., 2000, p. 6. see also Narvaez,
2005, pp. 131–135; Narvaez & Bock, 2002, pp. 300–304; Rest et al., 1999b, p. 297)

Page | 9
Whatever its advantages or disadvantages, the Neo-Kohlbergians do not make the schemas-are-
abstractions move.

Kohlberg and Neo-Kohlbergians disagree about what it means for an individual to progress.
Kohlberg thought that individuals at a stage use mainly the judgments typical of that stage to deal
with moral dilemmas. Moral progress consists in moving from stage to stage (roughly theory to
theory) every few years, like ascending steps on a ladder. By contrast, Neo-Kohlbergians maintain
that individuals at every point on the moral development path use all sorts of judgments. People
do not stay at a single schema for years and then step up to the next schema in the way that
Kohlberg thought. They do not move from stage to stage. Instead, they use several different
schemas at every point in life. Moral progress consists in using higher level schemas more and
more often. Progress is incremental rather than stepwise as higher level schemas are gradually
used for larger and larger percentages of a person’s moral choices.

At first glance, one might take the Neo-Kohlbergian position to be that individuals flit from
schema to schema rather quickly. This would enable the Neo-Kohlbergians to explain the
stable/variable phenomenon by claiming that each individual accepts different schemas at different
times. People who have consolidated on a schema are fairly stable, but people in transition switch
their allegiances more frequently. In the course of a week, a person might implicitly accept and
then reject several different schemas as he or she makes several different moral choices. Since
some schemas are better than others, as individuals move from decision to decision, they shift up
and down among several different levels of moral sophistication. Morally advanced people accept
better schemas more often than morally underdeveloped people, but all accept all sorts of schemas
some of the time. Now a person who moves from schema to schema over days rather than months
is better described as confused or lacking commitment to any schema at all rather than as someone
at a particular point on a moral development path. But the claim that people lack moral theories
must be accounted as a drawback to the schema-flitting move. Although agents’ descriptions of
their own decision-making processes are often inaccurate, and claims of moral theory allegiance
are sometimes mere rationalization (Greene, 2008; Haidt et al., 2000), to dismiss the testimony of
everyone who claims to have a moral theory stretches credibility.

The schema-flitting move has another drawback. If people’s testimony about their fundamental
moral beliefs is disregarded, how is the schema used on a particular occasion to be determined?
To get from choices on the DIT to a claim about schemas, one must assume that at any point in
time an individual’s concepts and rules correspond with his or her schema. When a person deploys
certain concepts and rules to make a decision, one infers that the person is currently using the
corresponding schema.

Codes seldom provide a rationale or explanation from moral theory, yet the adequacy of a prescription is often
judged by its coherence with the more general intermediate concepts and principles. In turn, intermediate
concepts and principles may be judged for coherence with more general principles like justice or utility.
(Bebeau & Thoma, 1999, p. 348)

Since people clearly do use the concepts and rules that go with relativism one moment, the
concepts and rules that go with deontology the next, and so on, one infers that people flit from
schema to schema. However, as mentioned above, schemas, concepts and rules do not typically

Page | 10
line up. Thus, this inference is unsound.

Rather than the schema-flitting interpretation, a better way to understand the Neo-Kohlberian
position is that each individual can use various different schemas in different situations because
he or she accepts many schemas at any point in time. Roughly speaking, rather than possessing
one moral theory, as Kohlberg suggests, the Neo-Kohlbergians maintain that each person
possesses many.

This view differs from mine only in detail. Both Neo-Kohlbergians and that people make moral
judgments seemingly stemming from different moral theories in different situations. explaining
this by maintaining that people accept different theories in different spheres, accept conglomerated
theories such as utilitarianism- deontology-virtue-ethics, and connect their moral theories,
intermediate concepts and concrete rules only tenuously. The FCM does not divide the judgment
component of moral functioning by sphere. Neo-Kohlbergians do not correlate variation in moral
judgment within an individual to different levels of moral development within different spheres.
Instead, they say that schema choice depends upon maturation, experience and moral development
(Narvaez & Gleason, 2007). Moreover, rather than say that people accept a single conglomerated
theory, Neo-Kohlbergians would prefer to say that people accept several different schemas,
especially during periods of transition. But these differences may turn out to be primarily verbal.

To summarize, the views of Kohlberg and the Neo-Kohlbergians on the stages v. schemas debate
(Nucci, 2002, pp. 319–320). Kohlberg is right to maintain that people generally retain the same
implicit moral theory for long periods. People advance every few years by moving from lower to
higher stages. Moral development is stepwise rather than incremental. On the other hand, the Neo-
Kohlbergians are right to observe that people typically use several sorts of judgment. I have
reconciled the Neo-Kohlbergian observation with Kohlberg’s view by maintaining that (a)
people’s theories change rarely and with difficulty, but (b) people use different theories in different
spheres, (c) use inconsistent, compound theories and (d) change their intermediate concepts and
concrete rules easily, thus producing the illusion of flitting from theory to theory. An important
implication of the last point is that, like the sub-components of sensation, the three sub-components
of judgment advance independently.

3.Moral Judgment :
The bad man will reach as a result of his calculation what he sets himself to do, so
that he will have deliberated correctly, but he will have got for himself a great evil.
(Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

The MJI focused upon the ability of respondents to apply what they believe about morality to
concrete situations. That is, Kohlberg aimed to measure moral reasoning, the ability to combine
awareness of the facts of the situation with normative beliefs in order to determine which acts are
right and wrong. Improvement in moral reasoning is, indeed, a significant component of moral
development. A sophisticated set of normative beliefs (moral theorizing) plus a refined ability to
perceive the facts of situations (moral sensitivity) are not the only important factors; these two
items must be correctly combined (moral reasoning). Kohlberg objected to the idea of combining
theorizing and reasoning in a single component. He considered the DIT problematic because it

Page | 11
conflated the assessment of what he called content and structure, which is roughly what I am
calling theorizing and reasoning. Kohlberg thought a single construct should not be used to
measure both because they varied independently (Kohlberg, 1984).

Theorizing and reasoning are clearly intertwined in various ways. The development and exercise
of each depends upon the other. Moreover, flaws in one corrupt the other. Nevertheless, it cannot
be denied that some people reliably apply good moral theories badly; others reliably apply bad
moral theories well. People who use sophisticated moral theories, intermediate concepts and
concrete rules, but nevertheless make what their theories would take to be the wrong choices,
exhibit a deficiency of reasoning, but not of theorizing. Everything they say about their beliefs
sounds good, but when talking about particular choices, they seem clueless. We all know many
such high-minded yet muddle-headed folks. Conversely, people who use sophomoric moral
theories, intermediate concepts and concrete rules, but nevertheless make what, according to their
theories, are the right choices, exhibit a deficiency of theorizing but not of reasoning. Everything
they say about particular choices would make perfect sense if one just accepted their sophomoric
moral beliefs. We all know many such clear-thinking yet misguided folks. Just as the Individuating
Principle implies that sensation and judgment deserve to be separate components, so theorizing
and reasoning also deserve to be separate components.

At first glance, moral reasoning might seem to be mere reasoning. Practical syllogisms are
syllogisms, after all. However, there is something distinctively moral about moral reasoning,
namely its failure modes. Certain biases (e.g. racist beliefs) and temptations (e.g. lust for one’s
neighbor’s wife) afflict people dramatically when they think about moral action, but although these
biases and temptations have some impact on syllogisms unrelated to morality, their impact is
comparatively limited. Thus, I suggest that like sensation and moral theory, moral reasoning has
sub-components. These sub-components include: (1) general reasoning, (2) avoiding
rationalization due to bias and (3) avoiding rationalization due to temptation.

Obviously, most people are not equally competent at all of these sub-components. Some people
reason badly about morality because they reason badly about everything. Others are generally good
reasoners, but fail to draw the correct conclusions in moral reasoning about certain issues because
they are working with false beliefs of the sort . They do fine on most subjects, but just can’t think
straight when it comes to Black people, for example. Yet others reason well in general, and can
think well enough when disinterested, but are easily diverted from the correct conclusions by
perceived self-interest. They can recognize lack of integrity in others, but when they violate their
own principles for gain, they seem to believe their own rationalizations. Thus, the sub-components
are independent.

Why do the Neo-Kohlbergians not include separate theorizing and reasoning components? Moral
reasoning is not typically complicated or esoteric. Except for rare hard cases, moral reasoning
presents itself to the reasoner as a snap. ‘take this nice shirt home from the store without paying
for it? Naw, shoplifting is wrong.’ The reasoning that enables people to see that some things are
wrong and others right may be so trivial and nearly instantaneous that from the inside it seems to
be an intuition or a perception rather than a reasoning process at all. This is perhaps why some
people deny the very existence of a reasoning process in ethics, but Neo-Kohlbergians do not make
this mistake. Neo-Kohlbergians have inadvertently underemphasized the importance of moral
reasoning by their choice of measuring tool. The MJI is a production measure; it requires

Page | 12
respondents to produce answers (i.e. to reason). The DIT is a recognition measure; it requires
respondents to select answers (i.e. to identify with the results of someone else’s reasoning). By
turning away from the MJI and toward the DIT, Neo-Kohlbergians have turned their attention
away from the reasoning process and toward the choice of constellations of moral beliefs.

Our schemas are conceptions of institutions and role-systems in society. … Instead of Kohlberg’s claim
of studying “justice operations,” we do not claim that our schemas directly assess cognitive operations
(Rest et al., 2000, p. 3; see also Rest et al., 1999b). Virtually every research innovation of Piaget and
Kohlberg, designed to separate beliefs and values from reasoning abilities, is forsaken in the DIT format.
… [D]eclarative knowledge encoding is being tapped (beliefs and values), not the procedural knowledge
or moral reasoning and judgment (Puka, 2002, p. 345).

Nevertheless, Neo-Kohlbergians have not neglected reasoning. It is obviously central to their

research. Nor have they inappropriately bundled reasoning together with theorizing within the
judgment component, as Kohlberg feared. Instead, once the three sub-components of reasoning
are specified, it becomes clear that the Neo-Kohlbergians actually agree that at least these sub-
components of reasoning should be separated from theorizing, and the sub-components separated
from each other. To begin with the clearest case, Neo-Kohlbergians agree that ordinary reasoning
and theorizing are independent. Logic courses improve the former; ethics courses improve the
latter (Rest 1979, pp. 207–211). Neo-Kohlbergians also separate the ability to avoid rationalization
due to bias from theorizing. They consider it a part of sensitivity.

Moral sensitivity involves not only moral perception… but also what some philosophers call “moral
imagination”… Moral imagination requires perspective taking, empathy, and controlling social
bias. (Narvaez, 2005, p. 146)

Finally, Neo-Kohlbergians understand the character component to be the ability to carry out one’s
judgment about the right thing to do, the ability to act well. Now part of acting well is avoiding
being dragged by temptation to do what one knows one shouldn’t, but another is avoiding the
rationalization that temptation urges. So Neo-Kohlbergians consider the ability to reason well
despite temptation as part of character, rather than part of judgment. Overall, the Neo-
Kohlbergians and I agree that the three reasoning sub-components should be separated from each
other and from theorizing. We differ only in that I bundle the general ability to reason together
with the abilities to resist bias and temptation as sub-components of reasoning, while the Neo
Kohlbergians disperse these abilities among other components. One small advantage of my
arrangement is that it enables me to model the reasoning process as a combination of (1) some
premises consisting of concrete rules with (2) other premises consisting of perceptions about the
morally relevant facts about a particular situation seen through the lens of intermediate concepts
(3) in order to draw a conclusion about what to do in the situation.

4.Moral motivation and character :

There is a sort of man … whom passion masters so that he does not act according to right reason, but
does not master to the extent of making him believe that he ought to pursue such pleasures without
reserve; this is the incontinent man… (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

According to the Neo-Kohlbergians, the motivation component of the FCM is what enables people

Page | 13
to do the right thing by either lacking or overcoming contrary inclinations. The character
component consists in the abilities and determination necessary to carry out whatever action has
been decided upon. Although all of the components are intertwined, decision-making arises mostly
from moral sensitivity and judgment while moral motivation and character (what might be called
willpower and enabling virtues) are primarily responsible for implementing the choices once made.
Separating motivation and character from the more cognitive components of moral functioning
enables the Neo-Kohlbergians to explain incontinence, the paradigm sort of uneven moral
development. As we all know only too well, people must sometimes struggle against their
inclinations to do what they know they should. Continent people know what is right and do it
despite bad inclinations. Incontinent people also know what is right, yet succumb to inclination,
act badly and then feel guilty because they combine well-developed sensitivity and judgment with
poorly developed motivation and character. theorizing and reasoning components constitute a
complete account of moral functioning. In particular, incorporating affect into each of these three
components, as the Neo-Kohlbergians do, makes it possible— indeed desirable—to explain
continence and incontinence without postulating separate motivation and character components.
Consider affect’s contribution to sensation. Passions are salience projectors. When agents become
afraid, what they perceive is transformed. Certain things are foregrounded; others are
backgrounded; yet others are changed. Well-lit areas jump out at the agent as safe havens; beautiful
sunsets are ignored as irrelevant; trees become things to hide behind; and so on. Affect’s effect on
theorizing and reasoning is also huge. People rationalize. They seek beliefs and syllogisms which
endorse their passions. Conversely, perceptions, theorizing and reasoning influence passions
dramatically. People strive to reduce inner conflict by talking themselves into some passions and
out of others. As Aristotle says, ‘choice is either desiderative reason or ratiocinative desire’
(Aristotle, 1984, p. 1799). One crucial implication of the integrated and complex relationship
between cognition and affect is this. The belief that a certain act is morally required in a certain
situation may be accompanied by a desire to perform it just because it is morally required. If such
perception/belief/desire combinations reliably outweigh contrary inclinations, then the person is
continent. If contrary inclinations often triumph, the person is incontinent. Both the ability to
choose moral action against wayward inclinations and the abilities and determination to carry out
such choices are explicable without appeal to separate motivation and character components.
Following a somewhat different line of thought, Minnameier arrives at a similar conclusion.

A moral belief in the form of a moral judgment cannot be conceived as an act of “cold cognition,” rather
it is already motivated by the insight in the given moral problem and—having that problem—a desire to
solve it. … Moral motivation in the sense of Component III is theoretically empty and practically
superfluous. (Minnameier, 2010, pp. 63–65)

So-called ‘happy victimizers’ seem to know what is right, but act wrongly without guilt or other
signs of internal conflict. If the knowledge of what is right carried with it a desire to act rightly for
its own sake, it seems that there should be no happy victimizers. Yet they are common (Nunner-
Winkler & Sodian, 1988). Are happy victimizers counterexamples to my account? claim that the
desire can accompany right belief, not that it always does accompany right belief. Second, suspect
that what happy victimizers know is what is thought by others to be right, but they themselves
don’t accept it as right. They are vicious rather than guiltlessly incontinent. Another implication
of the integration of cognition and affect is that virtue may be re-envisioned. Virtues are sometimes
viewed as moral strengths, abilities that help defeat temptations or remedy omissions in

Page | 14
motivations. They are primarily affective boosters for cognition. Reason does the thinking; passion
just adds oomph (Rest, 1983). A good character overcomes resistance to the implementation of a
choice after thinking is done, or unblocks resistance in order to allow thinking to proceed. Courage,
for example, enables people in dangerous situations to avoid brain freeze and the temptation to
flee. So understood, it would make sense to segregate the virtues from the other components, and
that might explain the need for a separate character component. However, there are two theoretical
objections to a separate character component. First, Neo-Kohlbergians locate complex traits such
as courage and honesty among the intermediate concepts of the judgment component (Thoma,
Derryberry, & Crowson, 2013, p. 243), leaving the character component occupied by relatively
simple, mundane, arguably morally neutral virtues such as keeping on task and avoiding
distractions. Second, taking seriously the integration of cognition and affect yields a more
integrated, inclusive conception of virtue. taking each simple or complex virtue to be a disposition
to exercise sensitivity, theorizing and reasoning reliably and excellently within a sphere. A
courageous person, for example, correctly distinguishes the relevant facts in situations of physical
risk, determines what acts are right in such situations, desires to perform these acts (at least
partially) because they are right and has no significant contrary inclinations to overcome. Similarly
for an on-task person. Character traits are not faculties or processes developing alongside and
separate from sensitivity, theory and reasoning; rather they are dispositions of sensitivity, theory
and reasoning, understood as shot through-and-through with affect. There are positive objections
to the motivation and character components, too. First, if there were such a thing as willpower, it
would not vary from sphere to sphere. When the power goes out in a home, all of the appliances
stop working— not just the refrigerator and the microwave. Similarly, if incontinence was caused
by a malfunctioning motivation component, then incontinent people would be incontinent with
respect to all spheres of human life. They would succumb whenever they experienced severe
temptation of any sort because on this view, the ‘power’ to overcome any temptation would derive
from a single source, namely the will. But no one is incontinent across the board. Instead, each
incontinent person is incontinent in only a few respects. Some people binge on alcohol or anger
whenever the opportunity presents itself, for example, but handle severe temptations in other
spheres of life just fine. Some people can face an enemy on a battlefield, but not an audience at a
public-speaking engagement. A parallel point might be made about change. People do not improve
or backslide across the board. The ability to implement moral decisions must vary from sphere to
sphere, which suggests that it is not a function of a motivation component. Second, introspection
also provides counter-evidence. Except for cases of starvation, addiction, extreme pain, etc.,
people do not struggle against brute urges. They struggle against reason/desire/passion
combinations. Resisting a brownie or bribe is not like winning a tug of war with oneself, but rather
like winning an argument with oneself. It is not an exercise of willpower, but rather an exercise of
cognition and affect. One line of reasoning from certain beliefs intertwined with certain
perceptions and desires collides with another. This is better modeled by a clash within sensation,
theory and reason than by a clash between sensation and judgment on the one hand, and motivation
and character on the other. Since the character traits of virtue, continence, incontinence and vice
do not demand separate character and motivation components, and since theory and introspection
yield reasons to oppose these components, an Occam-like drive to

Page | 15
 Figure 2 . Author’s model

avoid redundancy suggests their elimination. Indeed, the empirical evidence for the independence
of these components from the other two is not overwhelming (Bebeau, 2001, p. 185). For example,
most of the evidence for the independence of the motivation component comes from surveys of
dentists and dental school students. These surveys may be detecting an effect of identifying with
a professional role rather than a component of a general moral functioning structure shared by non
professionals as well as professionals. Evaluating the empirical evidence for the existence of
separate character and motivation components is beyond the scope of this paper—a project for
future research. Because the postulation of motivation and character components seems
unnecessary, incompatible with sphere-to-sphere variation, unsupported by introspection and not
thoroughly substantiated by studies.

Conclusion-

Tt is possible to fail in many ways. (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics)

The four components of the FCM are sensitivity, judgment, motivation and character. To update
the FCM have suggested that the sensitivity component be emphasized, the judgment component
be divided into theorizing and reasoning components, and the motivation and character
components be dropped. Thus, taking the components of moral functioning to be moral sensitivity,
moral theorizing and moral reasoning, each consisting of a combination of cognition and affect
(see Figure 2). This seems to be a more dramatic departure from the FCM than it actually is. Neo-
Kohlbergians completely about sensitivity, and merely quibble with them about reasoning and
theorizing. The main dispute is over the need for motivation and character components, and these
are far from the focus of the Neo-Kohlbergian research program. Overall, my account is a friendly
amendment to the FCM. The sensitivity, theorizing and reasoning components are so deeply

Page | 16
intertwined that teasing them apart for discussion, let alone measurement, is a daunting task. But
despite their interconnections, these components often vary independently within a single
individual. Individuals commonly excel with respect to one or two of these processes, but perform
poorly with respect to the remaining two or one. Some people sense and reason well, but what they
excellently apply is a sophomoric moral theory. Others hold highly sophisticated moral theories
which they are unable to apply correctly. Yet others reason well using sophisticated theories, but
consistently misperceive situations. And so on. A further complexity is that each of these three
components has at least three sub-components, all of which may vary independently within
individuals. Thinking of each component as monolithic would be a gross over-simplification.
Moreover, although all of these components and sub-components are compounded from intimately
intertwined cognition and affect, a person’s cognition can be well-developed while his or her affect
is poorly developed (i.e. includes morally bad passions and desires). This state of character is either
continence or incontinence, depending on whether the desire to do the right thing tends to triumph
or succumb to bad passions and/or desires in cases of conflict. Another possibility is to have
morally well-developed affect and poorly developed cognition. Such individuals typically desire
to do the right thing despite mistakenly thinking that it is the wrong thing to do. Because an
individual’s cognition and affect need not be equally sophisticated, there are at least 18 different,
independently varying aspects of each person’s moral functioning.

Finally, people’s moral abilities develop at different rates with respect to different spheres of
human life. Each person is not virtuous, continent, incontinent or vicious overall, but rather he or
she is virtuous with respect to some spheres of life, continent with respect to other spheres, and
incontinent and/or vicious with respect to yet other spheres. The dark side of these many
possibilities of uneven development is that no one gets everything right. The perfectly good person
is an idealization. On the bright side, no one gets everything wrong. There is some good in
everyone.

References

1. https://www.academia.edu/6458652/Tweaking_the_Four_Component_Model_of_Moral_
Development

Page | 17