Morality and Objectivity

Abstract

Another point at which Piaget’s work provides empirical support for Hobbes (and many other thinkers for that matter) is the relationship between ethics and rationality. Here is how he puts it:

To use an apter comparison, we may say that the child of 7 to 10 plays as he reasons. We have already [in Chapter IV of Judgment and Reasoning in the Child (Eng. tr. 1926)] tried to establish the fact that about the age of 7 or 8, precisely, that is to say, at the moment when our third stage appears …. discussion and reflection gain an increasing ascendency over unproved affirmation and intellectual egocentrism. Now, these new habits of thought lead to genuine deductions … in which the child grapples with a given fact of experience, either present or past. But something is still lacking if deduction is to be generalized and made completely rational: the child must be able to reason formally, i.e., he must have a conscious realization of the rules of reasoning which will enable him to apply them to any case whatsoever, including purely hypothetical cases (mere assumptions). (46)

Thus, about the age of eleven or twelve, the child reaches the point where he or she can comprehend the general principles involved in both logical and moral discourse. These principles emerge in the course of interaction with others.