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Journal of Moral Education

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Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach to moral development and moral education: a response to the JME Special Issue, September 2008
Minkang Kim & Derek Sankey
a a a

Seoul National University, Korea

Version of record first published: 11 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Minkang Kim & Derek Sankey (2009): Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach to moral development and moral education: a response to the JME Special Issue, September 2008, Journal of Moral Education, 38:3, 283-298 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057240903101499

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

Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach to moral development and moral education: a response to the JME Special Issue, September 2008
Minkang Kim* and Derek Sankey
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Seoul National University, Korea

Journal 10.1080/03057240903101499 CJME_A_410322.sgm 0305-7240 Original Taylor 2009 0 3 38 tiamo004@snu.ac.kr MinkangKim 00000September and & of Article Francis Moral (print)/0305-7240 Francis Education 2009 (online)

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

Introduction The notion of development has played a major role in education theory, especially as theory has drawn heavily on developmental psychology, in particular the many insights of Jean Piaget. In moral education, the pioneering work of Lawrence Kohlberg has provided a developmental framework for research and pedagogy for half a century. In September 2008, the Journal of Moral Education marked the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Kohlbergs doctoral dissertation, producing a Special Issue with Don Collins Reed as guest editor. The papers in the Special Issue were subsequently discussed at the annual meeting of the Association for Moral Education (AME), held at The University of Notre Dame, USA. One prevailing theme in the Special Issue papers and, indeed, running through much of the discussion at AME,

*Corresponding author. School of Dentistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, 110-749, Korea. Email: tiamo004@snu.ac.kr ISSN 0305-7240 (print)/ISSN 1465-3877 (online)/09/03028316 2009 Journal of Moral Education Ltd DOI: 10.1080/03057240903101499 http://www.informaworld.com

284 M. Kim and D. Sankey is captured by Daniel Lapsley and Patrick Hill (2008) when they say that, from the perspective of developmental psychology, the Kohlbergian Standard Model now looks a bit shop worn and there is increasing recognition that the field of moral development is at an important crossroads ( p. 314). The paper by Jeremy Frimer and Lawrence Walker (2008) echoes that thought, saying that moral psychology is between paradigms and requires a new paradigm of moral personhood (p. 333); a point taken further by Reed and Stoermer (2008) who suggest that what is needed is indeed a new paradigm; one that encompasses not only personality but, also, on the one hand, the brain and central nervous system and, on the other hand, interaction and culture (p. 419). The purpose of our paper is to respond to this sense of unease; the awareness that the theoretical ground is shifting below our feet and that something new and comprehensive is required in the field of moral development and moral education. We offer the broad outlines of an alternative paradigm. A basic premise of this paradigm is that moral development shares the same dynamic processes found within the whole of human development, including cognitive and motor development. Though sometimes linear and quantitative, human development is also non-linear and qualitative, continually in flux, changing and stabilising in response to experience and situation. Indeed, we believe that all organic development, including human development, is a result of emergent self-organisation as the organism interacts with the environment. In short, we argue for a Dynamic Systems Approach (DSA). Though still a minority position (Howe & Lewis, 2005, p. 250), over the last 15 years the DSA has increasingly made its mark in developmental psychology, building on the pioneering work of Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith (1994) in regard to cognitive and motor development, though not moral development. This paper will therefore attempt to rectify this omission, by taking the central concepts of the DSA and applying them to moral development and moral education. The title of the Special Issue expressed the hope that we might move towards an integrated model of moral functioning. We believe that the DSA is just such a model, or meta-theory (Witherington, 2007). By contrast, though the individual papers in the Special Issue raised central concerns, we feel that as a whole they fell short of providing a comprehensive vision of what the new integrated model might be; one, for instance, encompassing brain and culture, as Reed requested above. For example, Frimer and Walkers paper on moral personhood makes no mention of the role of memory and its neurobiology in the construction of the self and the dissolution of the self when memory is lost, as in Alzheimers disease. But, as Larry Squire and Eric Kandel (1999) remind us in their introduction to Memory: from mind to molecules, Memory is the glue that binds our mental life, the scaffolding that holds our personal history and that makes it possible to grow and change throughout life (p. ix). One paper that does discuss the brain focuses primarily on work from brain scanning technologies (Narvaez and Vaydich, 2008, p. 291), while also dipping into other areas of neuroscience. Given the title of the Special Issue, we wonder if the paper should have focused less on brain imaging and more on critically evaluating whether and how neurobiology can contribute to an integrated model of moral functioning.

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Imaging can point to areas of the brain that appear particularly active (or inactive) when undertaking prescribed tasks, but this is only of interest if it shows what is happening there; being told that an England and France rugby match is being played at Twickenham says little or nothing about the dramas unfolding on that hallowed turf. And, as neuroscientist Steven Rose (2005) has emphasised, in response to claims by Adrian Raine (2002) that an inability to empathise is often associated with lack of activity in the prefrontal lobes, this evidence provides correlations, not causes (p. 271).1 Despite persistent relativist claims in the literature for the incommensurability of competing paradigms, a previous paradigm may retain validity within certain parameters. Though replaced by relativity theory, Newtonian mechanics was nevertheless used to successfully navigate the stricken Apollo 13 back to Earth (Chalmers, 1999, p. 174). Similarly, though a dynamics approach marks a quite radical departure from the Kohlbergian paradigm of research and pedagogy, that earlier tradition nevertheless retains its place at one level of description. The adoption of a DSA does not invalidate what has been achieved before, but it does set it within a particular historical and conceptual context. Paradigm shifts are often preceded by a sense of crisis in the field and this may also be accompanied by a felt desire within the relevant academic community to critically examine taken-for-granted philosophical presuppositions (Kuhn, 1970). There is certainly evidence of this in the Special Issue. We begin our paper by going back to basics, asking whether the notion of development properly applies to minds and morality. That discussion will help to lay foundations for the remainder of the paper; first, as we consider the DSA in contrast to more traditional approaches; second, as we explore the model more fully in terms of its central claims; and, finally, as we explore the possibility that the ability to make moral choices and thus develop morally has its roots in the neurobiology of the organism. Though staying close to the core insights of Thelen and Smith, our paper will also draw on Gerald Edelmans (1987, 1989) Theory of Neuronal Group Selection, which strongly influenced their work. In this regard, our paper will be building on a previous discussion by one of us on The neuronal, synaptic self: having values and making choices (Sankey, 2006). Finally, in this introduction, a basic procedural requirement of the DSA, as we are presenting it, is to engage philosophically, psychologically and neurobiologically and to do so in such a way that insights generated in each of the three disciplines operate in mutual modification and none is considered, a priori, to be in the lead. In the context of a DSA, philosophers and developmental psychologists must engage more fully than they often have with the findings of neurobiology. At the same time, we need to make clear that in emphasising the neurobiological underpinnings of moral development, as we will, we are not advocating a reductionist account which posits that processes that reside within the organism are somehow more foundational than those that reside outside the organism, in the physical and social environments. Moreover, our appeal to organic processes entails a philosophical rejection of machine analogies that often prevail in the psychological and neurobiological literature, including processing devices or programs that are said to reside in minds and the

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286 M. Kim and D. Sankey analogy of wiring within the brain. And there is one further caveat: the context for our deliberations is education. Surely, one of the great strengths of the JME over the years is that, however philosophical or psychological the debate has been, the journal has never lost sight that its primary focus is education: moral education. Do minds develop? If minds do not develop, the notion of moral development and claims that moral education should be viewed developmentally are severely undermined. So, do minds develop? In his book, The childs mind, John White (2002) mounts an argument against what he calls developmentalism, by which he seems to mean an unfounded belief that minds develop in ways analogous to physical development. Biological development, he says, is concerned with the unfolding of an organism from its initial state to its mature state, from acorns to mature oak trees, but he questions whether these processes are also discoverable in the mental world (p. 71). He says, if minds are brains, minds can develop, but he then supposes that mental phenomena are not equitable with physical; though he admits that minds are biological in origin, even though not in the full-blooded way that developmentalism claims (p. 76). Therefore, we do not need to stop talking about the growth of childrens minds, as long as this is not interpreted in a biological way (p. 74). The biological metaphor, he says, views children as atomic organisms; thus, a major weakness in developmentalism is its individualism (p. 76). The individualist way of conceiving of the growth of childrens understanding implied in developmentalism is at odds with the viewthat learning must be a matter of social induction (p. 77). Education, he believes, is primarily a process of concept-acquisition and, as socially-owned phenomena, concepts can only be acquired by deliberate induction into public norms governing their correct application (p. 55). One might be tempted to dismiss Whites position as old-fashioned mind/body dualism and thus consider it a minority report. However, as noted more fully elsewhere (Sankey, 2007), there is more to it than that. Whites discussion in The childs mind is primarily indebted to the Forms of Knowledge thesis of Paul Hirst, plus the anti child-centred doctrines associated with R.S. Peters and the influential London paradigm. It is therefore not a minority position in philosophy of education. Moreover, the distinction White makes between the biological and mental worlds seems to be posited on the perception/conception distinction, common within analytic philosophy, but this does not necessarily entail mind/body dualism, at least not Cartesian substance-dualism. Rather, as Lakoff and Johnson (1999) have noted, it is based on the mistaken view that conception, the formation and use of concepts, is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our abilities to perceive and move (p. 37). In this paper we will not be concerned with concepts; believing that talk about concepts, whether they are ideas residing as representations in the mind or linked to language, is often unhelpful and can lead to the rather lopsided account of education as social induction provided by White. We will, however, be relating development to

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categorisation, a biological process closely linked with the biology of perception and found in all organisms, including prokaryotic bacterial cells. To that extent, at least, development is a biological phenomenon. This suggests that development of mind, including moral development, is not simply applying a biological metaphor, as White supposes, but is truly biological in that it relates to each individual human organism, operating on the basis of its biological inheritance, in accordance with its own predilections, in response to the multiplicities of its experience of being in the world. Thus, contrary to White, we affirm the individuality of each child while opposing individualism, by which we mean the practice and doctrine of self-centredness. The individuality of the self and its development has often been overlooked in developmental psychology, but it is the fundamental unit of study in the DSA (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 97). Its basis is in neurobiology; where the mapping of neuronal connections is different in each individual brain, including identical twins, as a result of their different experiences. Whites opposition to developmentalism has helped to identify a number of issues that are central to our paper, but we suggest it does more than that. It provides a warning to all who want to advocate development, including, and perhaps especially, moral development, that we need to be careful with our language. What precisely do we mean by the development of mind and moral development, what is it that develops and how? All too often the developmental thesis has been analogous to the claim that from small acorns mature oak trees grow, with predetermined starting points and programmed teleological ends; the result of some overarching design built into the organism, following stages, responding to schema of one kind or another. But suppose for a moment that there is no design, no stages, no schema, just a process of emergent self-organisation. It is to this possibility that we now turn. The view from above and the view from below Many who travel by plane experience seeing a placid blue sea when flying high in the sky, only to find, when coming in to land, that the sea is very rough and confused. It is not the state of the sea that has changed, but rather the viewpoint being brought to it; from above and then below, from afar and then magnified when near. Thelen and Smith (1994) use the metaphor of viewing from above and below when comparing the perspective of much previous developmental theory with that of the DSA. When seen from above, at one level of magnification, human development has appeared to many theorists as orderly, progressive, incremental and teleological (p. xv), guided by some inner mechanism of design. By contrast, they describe how their research into motor and cognitive development forced them to see a very different picture, the view from below. From that perspective, development appeared messy, exploratory, opportunistic, syncretic and context sensitive (p. xvi). If we now apply this analogy to moral development, Kohlbergian stage theory described an orderly, progressive and incremental process, whereby the infant mind is drawn onward and upward towards the goal of adult moral reasoning. And at one

288 M. Kim and D. Sankey level of analysis it works well. Just as there really is a sea below and it appears blue, there are different kinds of moral reasoning and the reasoning appears to develop with age; that recognition is built into the legal code, where minors are not expected to reason with the same acuity as adults. Given this degree of reality, if one conducts research in a certain manner, asking certain kinds of questions and encoding the answers statistically across groups according to a certain algorithm, one may well discover the progressive, stage-like patterns that Kohlberg described. It is one level of magnification, but though development appears orderly, where the end-point of perfectibility is known in advance, a dynamic approach suggests that, at another level of magnification, moral development will appear messy, unpredictable, individually variable, context-sensitive; the result of emergent self-organisation. If this is indeed the case, one would expect to see background anomalies in current research findings that may suggest something more is happening than is being captured at present levels of magnification. In a comparison of data collected from a sample of secondary school students, university students and adults, first in 1994 and again in 2007, using a Korean version of the Defining Issues Test (DIT) approach of James Rest (1979), Yong-Lin Moon and colleagues (2008) could not find differences in average p (%) scores between the same age groups across the span of 13 years. However, when viewed item by item, a very different picture emerged in the way the respondents exhibited preferences at conventional and post-conventional levels of reasoning; the aggregated scores led to one set of conclusions that were not supported when the scores were examined item by item. So the items level of analysis matters, but what if the magnification was increased still further to look at individual responses over a longitudinal time span? In one recent and interesting example, presented at the AME Conference in November 2008, Yukiko Maeda2 and colleagues reported how they had attempted to reanalyse data from a 10-year longitudinal DIT study (19721983), originally conducted by Rest, using a new statistical method, the Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM). The purpose of using HLM was to introduce multi-level analysis, which highlights inter-individual differences in moral development. The original regression analysis, based on participants moral reasoning scores and years of formal education, had produced an estimated developmental trajectory that showed a steady, progressive transition of development at the group level. However, when individual scores were analysed, they exhibited considerable fluctuations from the mean, tracking sometimes above and below the mean curve. This variation was not apparent at the group average level of analysis. In the presentation discussion, this anomaly was said to suggest a need to examine subjects life experiences at moments of significant score change, to better understand what causes progressive or sometimes regressive change in moral reasoning. We agree, but, as we will see shortly, these fluctuations are accounted for in a DSA as stabilities and instabilities present for each individual at all times, including during data collection. Indeed, from the perspective of the DSA behavioural instability is particularly important for understanding development because it is frequently associated with transitional events (Howe & Lewis, 2005, p. 249).

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Towards a Dynamic Systems Approach The developing organismepigenetic emergence

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Whatever else we may be, including persons with minds, we are also biological organisms. This suggests that any account of moral development should at least be consistent with our status as biological and neurobiological organisms, though this does not imply that morality is innate, somehow encoded in our genes (Joyce, 2006). Indeed, biologist Brian Goodwin (1994) has bemoaned the fact that in biology the organism has somehow been displaced by the current reductionist emphasis on genes. Genes certainly play their part, but organisms cannot be reduced to the properties of their genes and must be understood as dynamical systems with distinctive properties that characterise the living state (p. 3). Even at the level of bacteria, studies have shown that genotype and environment do not determine cell state; it can occur spontaneously without any defined internal and external cause (Sol & Goodwin, 2000, p. 63). Moreover, dynamic systems exhibit properties that are emergent from their interactions and not dependent on pre-existing codes (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 142). These complex systems therefore exhibit epigenesis: the term used by Aristotle when arguing that embryos emerge from the dynamic interactions of their parts. They are systems with a history, where an increase in complexity is dependent on preceding events and processes; they are systems that are unpredictable, because they are highly sensitive to initial condition; they are systems that change over time and in which novelty can be created. The science of dynamic systems has its roots in mathematics, physics and chemistry, but it has since been widely applied to a host of phenomena that are both complex and exist far from thermal equilibrium as non-linear, self-organising, dissipative structures (the term used by Prigogine (1997, p. 66) to describe systems that draw on a high energy source to do work before giving some of the energy back to the environment. In the development of this new science, the strange and beautiful patterns produced in the Belousov-Zhabotinski chemical reaction, played a major role in confirming that matter far from equilibrium acquires new properties (p. 67). These are said to be open systems in which, with a sufficient injection of energy, new and ordered structures and patterns of behaviour may spontaneously emerge. All living structures are emergent, dissipative, self-organising systems; from the dynamic patterns of gene activities in developing organisms (Kauffman, 1995) to the behaviour of ant colonies and the functioning of human brains (Sol & Goodwin, 2000). (We will shortly relate the notion of epigenetic emergence to brain dynamics.) Human behaviour, operating in real time (the here and now), therefore shares a similarity with all living systems in that it is maintained and may develop as a result of emergent self-organisation. The cornerstone of a dynamic theory of development is this emergent nature of behaviour assembled in real time (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 73). Thus:
even behaviors that look wired in or program-driven can be seen as dynamically emergent: behaviour is assembled by the nature of the task and opportunistically recruits the necessary and available organic components (which themselves have dynamic histories) and environmental support. (p. 73)

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290 M. Kim and D. Sankey It is our thesis that moral development takes its place alongside the development of human cognition and action as a product of epigenetic emergenceassembled by the nature of the task and piggybacking on the human organisms ability to categorise, guided by its inherent predilection to value, in response to a multitude of nuanced environmental experiences. Development and behavioural attractor states We will have much more to say about this shortly, but first we need to further outline Thelen and Smiths (1994) application of dynamic systems, complexity and emergence in understanding the development of human action and cognitionthe messy view from below. It has been common practice in developmental studies to conduct cross-sectional sampling that compares groups of subjects at a number of different ages. Development is said to have occurred if statistically reliable differences are found in the mean levels of performance at the different age levels. Though these studies have their merits in establishing the parameters of change at particular points in time, a dynamics approach is posited on the assumption that: Developmental pathways can only be deconstructed with individual data, collected longitudinally (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 73), using frequent sampling points that will track the state of the collective variable in individual subjects over time (p. 100, emphasis added). When interpreting this data, development is viewed as the perturbation of an individuals behavioural attractor states. An attractor state is an abstract mathematical construct used to describe the stable point into which a given system will preferably settle. For example, ever since Galileo was fascinated by the swinging lamps in Pisa Cathedral, it has been realised that in an ideal frictionless world a pendulum would settle into a simple harmonic motion, but in the real world it will gradually run down and stop at a stable state, its point attractor. The range through which the pendulum naturally swings after being given an initial push represents its state space. In order to visualise an attractor state within the context of human ontogenetic development (the developmental history of an individual organism), Thelen and Smith use the notion of an ontogenetic landscape, adapting C. H. Waddingtons (1966) metaphor of an epigenetic landscape of hills and valleys, where balls (perhaps like glass marbles) are situated in some of the valleys which represent attractor states. Perturbing the balls out of the valleys (or basins) requires energy, and balls located in the steepest and deepest valleys are more resistant to perturbation than those in valleys that are shallow. In terms of this model, development can be conceived as an individuals trajectory through multiple and changing points of attraction, which coalesce and dissolve with time (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 122). Hence, in contrast to stage theory where development is conceived as progressive and linear, a dynamics approach posits that development occurs as a series of changes of relative stability and instability (p. 122), where the hills and valleys both deepen and become more shallow as preferred states emerge and disappear (p. 122) in response to changing experience and situation. Development is therefore a non-linear process in constant

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flux, held between the poles of stability and instability on an ontogenetic landscape that is itself in constant flux. Thelen and Smith (1994) applied this model when trying to unravel the complexities of infant leg movement; patterns of kicking and stepping and how stepping adapts when on a treadmill. Thus, kicking and stepping are conceived as having different valleys and the ability of infants to step on the treadmill is seen as the gradual flattening and merging of the newborn attractor with the treadmill valley (p. 123). But if we now consider these ideas in the context of moral development, this model suggests that instead of a trajectory programmed by genetics or normative stages, we view moral development as a trajectory of variability, continuously changing and stabilising in interaction with an ever-changing environmental landscape where attractor points both form and disappear over time. Across that landscape, a rigidly held opinion or belief may be envisaged as the ball quite firmly held in the trough of a deep attractor. By contrast, a more loosely held opinion is envisaged as being in a shallow valley, or unstably perched on the crest of a hill, ready to fall into an attractor. Kohlbergs progressive stages of moral reasoning may well describe stabilities within moral development, but from the perspective of a DSA this simply ignores the variability and instabilities of belief and action that attend each persons moral trajectory. This would seem particularly relevant in the context of the rollercoaster ups and downs of adolescence, though it applies at every age phase.3 In terms of research, the DSA requires that we track the stabilities and instabilities of an individual subjects attractor states over a longitudinal time-scale that is appropriate to the scale of ontogenetic change. Individual variability has often been considered an obstacle to detecting group differences in much previous research, but in a dynamic view of development the origins and function of variability are absolutely central for understanding change (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p.145). And, if development is indeed epigenetic, enfolding in a contingent and historical fashion, research into moral development has to be sensitive to an individual subjects present context, including the research context and the subjects history of past experience and previous development. The notion that moral development is a trajectory of stabilities and instabilities through a shifting landscape of behavioural attractors also begins to raise interesting questions for teaching and learning. For example, if the purpose of moral education is to aid moral development, should it challenge students to think other than they do, perturbing their attractor states, perhaps nudging them from one attractor to another? Or is that a questionable pedagogical practice? Either way, the centrality of process in the DSA would seem to favour a view of education as process and curriculum as development, as advocated by Vic Kelly (1999) for example, in contrast to the view of education as induction advocated by White (2002). Brain dynamics and the epigenetic, neurobiological rudiments of morality If this account of development is anywhere near the mark, what might be happening in the brain? One of the great strengths of the DSA is that its principle of dynamic, emergent self-organisation can apply at every level of development, wherever there is

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292 M. Kim and D. Sankey change and transition, from a microanalysis of neural cells to the behaviour of the individual organism operating in the context of society and culture. Up to this point we have mainly been concerned with the macroscopic level of behaviour, we will now consider the brain as a dynamic, epigenetic, self-organising system. But, do we really need to be concerned with the brain; is it not enough to simply talk about the mind? This issue can arouse the passions, legitimately so, if neuroscience is drawn into debate to give credence to a favoured theory when not integral to that theory (e.g. The Four Components Model in the Special Issue paper by Narvaez and Vaydich), a strategy that can appear somewhat contrived, or if the claims for neuroscience are reductionist and eliminative. We therefore repeat that, from the perspective of the DSA, neither the brain nor genes occupy a privileged status as the motor for developmental change (Thelen & Smith, 1994, p. 72). The DSA is opposed to reductionism of that kind. In regard to relevance, Marc Lewis (2005) rather nicely echoed our view when he said:
If our minds were not inscribed in flesh, we would not have to worry about the properties of complex systems. But our minds are greatly dependent on our brains, and brains are designed by evolution to self-organise rapidly under the sway of experiences and the emotions that color them. Therefore to understand developing minds we need to understand developing brains, and the principles of self-organisation provide a foundation for doing so. (p. 273)

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Previously we suggested that moral development can be viewed as an individual subjects trajectory of variability, constantly changing and stabilising in response to ever-changing natural and social environments, and that moral development piggybacks on the human organisms ability to categorise, guided by its inherent predilection to value, in response to a multitude of nuanced environmental experiences. We believe that perceptual categorisation and the predilection to value provide the neurobiological rudiments of moral development, working recursively in conjunction with the neurobiology of memory, emotion and meaning. Our purpose in what follows is to broadly outline this basic idea, drawing on Gerald Edelmans (1987, 1989) Theory of Neuronal Group Selection (TNGS). Piaget argued for the importance of active, repetitive perception and self-equilibration. He viewed the mind in terms of a dynamic process, where development is through construction. Edelman argues, instead, that our brains work through a process of selection; a view of learning also advocated by Popper (1994). Thelen and Smith (1994) point out that, for Piaget, the mind is a logical device that mirrors the logic of the world (p. 161), but, as Richard Rorty (1979) convincingly argued, the mind is not the mirror of nature. And, the world does not present itself as ready labelled, rather we do the labelling and categorise our perceptions. Edelman challenges the idea that the mind is pre-programmed like a serial computer and that the brain works by instruction, how then does it learn and develop? He believes that perceptual categorisation is the fundamental of learning and development. He draws our attention to the immense population and variability of neurons and neuronal maps. These maps connect with sensory receptor cells (of eyes, ears etc.) and also between themselves (maps to maps); a process he calls global

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mapping. Signals between maps go back and forth, constantly, interrelating in exceedingly large numbers, in response to internal and external experience; a process he calls re-entry. In this dynamic process some of the many connective patterns formed become strengthened because they possess salience or meaning for the individual, whereas those connective patterns not valued are weakened or die. It is this dynamic, selective process, he believes, whereby the mappings self-organise through reciprocal relationship and interaction, which accounts for perceptual categorisation. This process is degenerate. Within moral discourse, degeneracy refers to moral decline, but in the context of biology it has a more redeeming connotation, referring to the loss of specialisation of an organism or its parts. Neuronal maps are degenerate, to the point that they allow for considerable flexibility and plasticity, but not so that they exclude specification. Thelen and Smith cite the seminal work of Walter Freeman and his team when illustrating degeneracy in perception, and we will follow their lead. In his book How brains make up their minds, Freeman (2000) describes his lifelong study of olfaction in rabbits that had been trained to recognise a number of different odorants (sawdust and banana etc.). These studies revealed a different picture of perception from the one generally advanced by neurobiologists and cognitivists who hold that an odorant is focusedinto just a handful of neurons (p. 70). His research showed the brain acting as a self-organising dynamic system, where groups of mutually excited neurons (Edelmans maps) participate in global overlapping and inter-relational modification. Electroencephalogram (EEG) recording produced a characteristic contour (similar to contours on a geographical map) when the rabbit sniffed a familiar sawdust odour. However, when it was then introduced to the odour of banana it not only produced a characteristic banana contour, a somewhat changed sawdust contour emerged as well. As Thelen and Smith (1994) note: This can only happen if sawdust is represented in the [olfactory] bulb not as a fixed structure or schema but as a dynamic assembly that is always a function of global activity (p. 132). We must pause here for a moment. At the start of this paper we spoke of the need to engage philosophically, psychologically and neurobiologically. We have also been gently critical of the paper in the Special Issue by Narvaez and Vaydich regarding the papers focus and discussion of neuroscience. Behind this criticism lies a deeper philosophical concern about the way neuroscience is brought into the discourse of moral development and moral education. To come straight to the point, the findings of neuroscientific research are not neutral and, as we engage with neuroscience, we need to be aware of just what philosophical commitments the findings we cite are carrying; commitments that have both guided research and been used in the interpretation of its findings. No neuroscientist is more aware of this than Walter Freeman; not only acknowledging his own philosophical commitments, but in showing how his interpretation from a dynamic systems and pragmatist point of view contrasts with materialists and cognitivists, even when interpreting evidence on which they all agree. We are similarly committed to the DSA and to a non-relativist hermeneutic. We all have our own values and biases, which takes us back to the brain and the centrality of a value-bias (what we are calling the predilection to value) in Edelmans

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294 M. Kim and D. Sankey account of the brain; the ability of the brain to categorise some things (events, experiences) as good or bad, or just better than others, given the current state of the organism and the environmental context. And, indeed, this is a most ancient of abilities, found even at the level of bacterial cells. As John Allman (2000) notes:
Bacteria possess highly developed sensory systems for the detection of nutrients, energy sources and toxins, and the capacity to store and evaluate the manifold information provided by these diverse receptors. The final outcome of this sensory integration is the decision to continue swimming in the same direction or tumble into a different course. Thus some of the most fundamental features of brains, such as sensory integration, memory, decision-making and the control of behaviour, can all be found in these simple organisms. (pp. 56)

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Bacteria discriminate between nutrients and toxins and take avoiding action when necessary. Animals discriminate between the odour of food and the odour of a predator. Without this ability, no organism could survive. So, making rudimentary value judgements is the most natural thing in the world. According to Edelman, value is imposed in the brain by the brain and it operates in the global process of synaptic elaboration and pruning.4 What the brain possesses is not a set of genetically acquired rules, but rather a value system, physically located in the evolutionary ancient brain stem, which works by sending chemical signals throughout the brain, reinforcing those connections that have meaning and salience for the individual. Edelman (1989) argues that memory is similarly value-dominated (p. 99) and results from a process of continual recategorization (p. 56); each time modifying previously selected neuronal groups. Thus no two memories of any given event are ever quite the same. Categorisation and memory are themselves deeply influenced by emotion. A review of the role of emotion from the perspective of the DSA can be found in Lewis (2005), but for our purposes we can appreciate the basic idea in the words of Esther Thelen when, in 1994, she participated in a BBC Horizon programme with Gerald Edelman. Referring to her research into how babies learn to reach out and grab toys, she explained how each baby had to find the solution, trying a whole array of movements of arms and legs, waving in all directions, until finding, first by chance and then repetition, one efficient swipe at the toy, putting it right in the mouth. She then added:
As the baby builds more and more abstract levels of cycles of action through her activity in the world, every action is suffused with value, with some goal that is satisfied. And what this means is that even the most high-level, the most abstract kinds of human thinking are based fundamentally on feeling and value. It is logical but its also emotionalin every aspect of the way we think.5

Likewise, it is our contention that the highest and most abstract kind of moral thinking is suffused with value, emotion and feeling. Our native ability as organisms to categorise our perceptions, coupled with an inborn predilection to value, in response to salient and meaningful experiences laid down in memory, provides the neurobiological rudiments for morality and moral development. Or, we may say, from the initial predilection to value represented by a diffuse attractor landscape with a few deep attractor basins, the child through repeated interaction with multiple environments develops a more complex, differentiated and stable set of attractor basins.

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Then comes adolescence, a time of dynamic stability and instability, when, through synaptic pruning and reorganisation the emotions gradually come under the executive control of the prefrontal lobes (Sankey, 2006) as new and deeper attractor basins emerge. Indeed, the transition through adolescence towards adulthood may represent a loss of degrees of freedom in individual development that can never be regained (Lewis, 2005, p. 266). To be clear, we are not saying that the whole edifice of social and cultural morality and moral development are nothing but or can be reduced to perceptual categorisation and the predilection to valuethat would be absurd. Morality requires language and imagination. But we do say that these basic biological processes, working recursively in conjunction with the neurobiology of memory, emotion and meaning, in interaction with the multifaceted environment, provide the rudiments from which the many levels of morality emerge. Methodologically, science is reductionist, but there have always been those in science, including Piaget (Lapsley, 1996), who have believed that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This is the notion of emergence, which in its weak form has underpinned the description of the DSA in this paper. There is a stronger version of emergence, which says that micro-level principles are inadequate for describing a natural systems behaviour, thus challenging reductionisms fundamental creed that life, mind and society are simply derivative states of matter that reduce to the basic particles and laws of physics. The DSA is not dependent on strong emergence, but if ethical laws emerge at each level of complexity, augmenting but not conflicting with laws of physics, it could be, as physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies (2006) speculates, that: Categories such as right and wrong could possess an absolute (law-like) rather than a socially relative status (p. xiii). Emergent self-organisation in moral development may yet turn out to be more fundamental than we have supposed. Conclusion We began this paper with the modest aim of sketching the broad outlines of the DSA and we are acutely aware that in the confines of this one paper we have not done more than that. Nevertheless, we hope that what we have provided in this highly prcised account is recognisably an integrated model that may, in some measure, take forward the mission of the Special Issue of the JME. We have not attempted to review each paper in the Special Issue, believing the authors are much better placed to do that in light of the model we have provided, but we do issue an invitation to all in the field of moral development and moral education to join with us in exploring this model as a potential framework for future research and teaching. We invite researchers to look again at their data to see whether this model is helpful in providing new and productive insights. And we invite teachers of moral education to see themselves as active participants in each childs personal trajectory through a shifting attractor landscape and to empathise with students when they exhibit shifting stabilities and instabilities instead of more stable moral developmental stages that, as teachers, we might prefer.

296 M. Kim and D. Sankey And for those in moral education who wish to participate, there is much work to be done. At the start of this paper we emphasised the need to relate theory to the practice of moral education. For our part, while currently developing the research methodology, we are also in the process of writing and testing materials to support the teaching of moral education in schools from the perspective of the DSA.6 Within stage theory, moral education provides support for the childs development when traversing from a current to a higher stage of moral reasoning. From the perspective of the DSA, though Kohlbergian stage theory may provide a broad-brush account it overlooks the complexity and messiness of moral development, which, being emergent and self-organising, is fluid, context-sensitive, non-linear and contingent. The educational challenge is to help the developing child deal with the complexities, the stabilities and instabilities that accompany development, given that, from the perspective of Edelmans TNGS, there is a value component in all learning, memory and action. The basic process of making value choices does not have to be induced, but may be developed. For example, the focus group for one set of materials currently being written is preadolescence, where the aim is to help youngsters prepare for the many changes and challenges they will face with the onset of puberty, as they traverse through a shifting landscape of attractor basins of moral development. The timing and focus of the learning are important. All too often the problems of puberty and adolescence are dealt with when the upheavals break in on youngsters and often they are only dealt with at the level of personal and social problems. The aim of this pack, provisionally called Dealing with myself and others, is to engage youngsters, parents and teachers, in understanding the transition from childhood to adolescence in advance, while also bridging the gap between the biological and social dimensions of the emergent self. Adolescence is a period of dynamic upheaval of physiological, neurophysiological, personal and social change, in which the formation of permanent or semipermanent attractor basins provides foundations for the adult self. It is a time when youngsters have to deal with themselves and others in unprecedented ways, where new, powerful and sometimes destructive attractors present themselves. Preadolescents therefore need help in preparing to deal with this period of transition, as do teachers and parents. Partly, this requires an understanding, by youngsters and adults alike, of the biological changes occurring within the body and brain and seeing how these changes impact on feelings and behaviour, which are in constant flux in response to circumstance and the individuals previous history of thinking, feeling and behaving. There is content to be learnt in this regard. But, more than that, the pre-adolescent needs to learn how to reflect on and monitor his or her own thinking, feeling and behaving: what is happening to me and why and how is this impacting on my ideas of what is right and wrong, good and bad? In short, the DSA approach to moral education requires, in part, a shift from cognitive to metacognitive ways of learning. The writing of all the materials we are currently preparing is guided by the core principle that runs throughout this paper; that all human development, including moral development, is a natural process of emergent self-organisation, as children

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and adolescents interact with the multifaceted natural and social environments that they encounter and to which, as human organisms, they intrinsically belong. Notes
1. 2. 3. 4. For a more extended discussion see Sankey, 2008. Our gratitude to Yukiko Maeda for kindly providing a copy of her PowerPoint presentation. For reference to the role of the amygdala at this stage of development, see Sankey 2006. This is evidenced at the neurobiological level in regard to Long Term Potentiation, required for long-term memory. During normal low-frequency firing at the synapses, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors on the post-synaptic neuron remain blocked. Long Term Potentiation is induced when the pre-synaptic neuron fires a sufficiently highfrequency tetanus (signal) that unblocks the NMDA receptor channel on the post-synaptic cell, allowing calcium ions to enter the neuron. A high-frequency tetanus will be induced when the organism detects a stimulus that is either positively or negatively salient (see Squire & Kandel, 1999). From the transcript of BBC Horizon programme, The man who made up his mind, transmitted on 24 January 1994. At the time of writing, an Asia Pacific regional centre has been established for the study of Human And Moral Development In Education (HAMDIE) from the perspective of the DSA, generously supported by a private research trust in Korea, The JT Park POSCO Foundation, located at Seoul National University, but incorporating the Asia Pacific nations.

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5. 6.

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