Well, regardless of what the “Keganites” are saying, I want to see the pre-theoretic facts before I’m going to be particularly interested in their model of “stages” etc.
Now, one way to read objections like Kaj’s is that my account of precisely which pre-theoretic facts would motivate an “adult developmental stages” theory is flawed. That’s a reasonable sort of objection. (I haven’t seen any evidence yet that any such objection is right, but there is no a priori reason why none can be.)
In such a case, if the objector wishes to substitute some different set of pre-theoretic facts, make the case that those facts constitute a state of affairs that can meaningfully be described as “there sure seem to be stages of adult development”, and then make the conditionally reasonable claim that a theory thereof is thus motivated—by all means, I would be interested to see such a thing.
But that argument isn’t going to involve any mention of any element of any existing theory at all. If it does, then the point has been thoroughly missed.
My interpretation of what Kaj wrote was indeed that he disagrees about exactly what pre-theoretic facts would suggest looking for an “adult developmental stages” theory, on the grounds that he thinks there could be such a theory (and indeed a basically-Kegan-shaped one) in which the strong age/stage correlation isn’t present.
The fact that the particular pattern of stage-transitions Kaj describes is basically-Kegan-shaped isn’t relevant to the validity of the objection, except in so far as it indicates that the pattern in question isn’t somehow the wrong sort of pattern to be part of an “adult developmental stages” theory.
For what it’s worth, my notion of what the pre-theoretic facts ought to look like isn’t exactly the same as yours. I’d want to see something like: 1. a specific set of psychological characteristics that 2. each exhibit a consistent pattern of progression through an individual’s life, 3. in such a way that we can put matching labels on all the progressions and see that people generally have most or all in consistently-labelled states, 4. (slightly optionally; if this fails then “developmental” is a misleading term) such that later-reached bundles of states are generally better in some sense than earlier-reached ones, and 5. (slightly optionally; if this fails then “stages” is a misleading term) a smallish discrete set of labels sufficing in the sense that most people most of the time have most of those characteristics in states corresponding to a single one of those labels. In particular, I don’t think I care whether the characteristics in question all pertain to a single “domain” in any sense, and I don’t think anything’s gained by introducing the possibility of correlations with other characteristics besides age, when later in your list you’re specifically going to demand correlation with age. And what I want to see is progression within each individual’s life, not a population-level correlation with age.
And what I want to see is progression within each individual’s life, not a population-level correlation with age.
I think I agree that this is a better criterion, yeah. I’m not prepared to be sure about this without thinking about it some more, but I definitely lean toward being convinced.
I don’t think I care whether the characteristics in question all pertain to a single “domain” in any sense
I don’t necessarily care about that either, but clustering and progression that is parallel across multiple domains is an additional fact, which is not necessary to motivate a theory of the relevant sort. And treating domains separately is useful because we may well have, for example, a case where the data that indicates clustering/progression in one domain is weaker than the data which indicates it in another domain; we want to retain the ability to say “well, I’m not sure about the claim that people exhibit this pattern with respect to rock climbing skill and knitting skill and desire for broccoli, but at least the first one is clearly true, and so we’d like a theory that explains that even if it doesn’t also explain the other stuff”.
In general, there’s not really a good reason not to keep domains conceptually separate here; we can always decide later that a pattern that holds across domains requires a unified theory (or we can notice that a theory that explains the pattern in one domain also explains it in other domains). In the meantime, keeping our claims narrowly scoped seems prudent.
Well, regardless of what the “Keganites” are saying, I want to see the pre-theoretic facts before I’m going to be particularly interested in their model of “stages” etc.
Now, one way to read objections like Kaj’s is that my account of precisely which pre-theoretic facts would motivate an “adult developmental stages” theory is flawed. That’s a reasonable sort of objection. (I haven’t seen any evidence yet that any such objection is right, but there is no a priori reason why none can be.)
In such a case, if the objector wishes to substitute some different set of pre-theoretic facts, make the case that those facts constitute a state of affairs that can meaningfully be described as “there sure seem to be stages of adult development”, and then make the conditionally reasonable claim that a theory thereof is thus motivated—by all means, I would be interested to see such a thing.
But that argument isn’t going to involve any mention of any element of any existing theory at all. If it does, then the point has been thoroughly missed.
My interpretation of what Kaj wrote was indeed that he disagrees about exactly what pre-theoretic facts would suggest looking for an “adult developmental stages” theory, on the grounds that he thinks there could be such a theory (and indeed a basically-Kegan-shaped one) in which the strong age/stage correlation isn’t present.
The fact that the particular pattern of stage-transitions Kaj describes is basically-Kegan-shaped isn’t relevant to the validity of the objection, except in so far as it indicates that the pattern in question isn’t somehow the wrong sort of pattern to be part of an “adult developmental stages” theory.
For what it’s worth, my notion of what the pre-theoretic facts ought to look like isn’t exactly the same as yours. I’d want to see something like: 1. a specific set of psychological characteristics that 2. each exhibit a consistent pattern of progression through an individual’s life, 3. in such a way that we can put matching labels on all the progressions and see that people generally have most or all in consistently-labelled states, 4. (slightly optionally; if this fails then “developmental” is a misleading term) such that later-reached bundles of states are generally better in some sense than earlier-reached ones, and 5. (slightly optionally; if this fails then “stages” is a misleading term) a smallish discrete set of labels sufficing in the sense that most people most of the time have most of those characteristics in states corresponding to a single one of those labels. In particular, I don’t think I care whether the characteristics in question all pertain to a single “domain” in any sense, and I don’t think anything’s gained by introducing the possibility of correlations with other characteristics besides age, when later in your list you’re specifically going to demand correlation with age. And what I want to see is progression within each individual’s life, not a population-level correlation with age.
I think I agree that this is a better criterion, yeah. I’m not prepared to be sure about this without thinking about it some more, but I definitely lean toward being convinced.
I don’t necessarily care about that either, but clustering and progression that is parallel across multiple domains is an additional fact, which is not necessary to motivate a theory of the relevant sort. And treating domains separately is useful because we may well have, for example, a case where the data that indicates clustering/progression in one domain is weaker than the data which indicates it in another domain; we want to retain the ability to say “well, I’m not sure about the claim that people exhibit this pattern with respect to rock climbing skill and knitting skill and desire for broccoli, but at least the first one is clearly true, and so we’d like a theory that explains that even if it doesn’t also explain the other stuff”.
In general, there’s not really a good reason not to keep domains conceptually separate here; we can always decide later that a pattern that holds across domains requires a unified theory (or we can notice that a theory that explains the pattern in one domain also explains it in other domains). In the meantime, keeping our claims narrowly scoped seems prudent.