Connections: [[Digital Garden/Metamodernism|Metamodernism]] This is a model developed by Michael Lamport Commons and Francis Asbury Richards in the early 1980s. It builds on the work of Jean Piaget and Kolhberg, because it supposes that Piaget's mode of cognitive stages is correct, and it adds a few more stages about what a normal human adult achieves (one might question the use of the word "normal" here). These ideas, loosely termed neo-Piagetian, are thought to help explain certain aspects of society. Commons developed the theory after spending a year studying mathematics, where the language of abstract algebra helped him describe the formal relationships between the different stages. This allowed him to characterize the stages according to their increasing "orders of complexity". These descriptions rely on "task analysis", which comes up with different tasks and dilemmas to test people. Other theorists observed adults and children in order to build their models. Commons and Richards mapped the stages mathematically, and found that the observations met their model more precisely. They could also use the same model for animals. The final version of their model appeared in 2017. Here are the 16 stages they described: **0. Calculatory Stage (molecules)** - Can distinguish between 0 and 1 (something versus nothing), much like a digital computer. - Can only react to stimuli without any distinguishing for strength of reaction; “organisms at the edge of life”, like DNA itself. - Humans pass this stage long before we are born; indeed, before we are even conceived. **1. Automatic Stage (cells)** - Can react to stimuli depending on different quantities, but only by automatic response and never through learning. - No coordination of different stimuli, there is just a single stimulus-response. - Single cell organisms; humans pass the stage before we are born. **2. Sensory or Motor Stage (amoeba)** - Can react in different ways to different stimuli, and can coordinate two stimuli responses (but not invent new responses). Move body parts. - For instance a leech, if you both shine on it with a lamp and shock it with electricity several times, you can get it to respond to just the lamp as if there was an electric shock. - Amoeba, slugs, mollusks, early human fetus. **3. Circular Sensory-Motor Stage (insect, fish, newborn human)** - Can reach, touch, grab, shake objects, babble, make single sounds (phonemes). - Can move body parts after having perceived objects and can recognize things. - Most predatory fish, insects, newborn humans. (Note that cognitive stage can be the same even if brain size, cognitive speed and perhaps the degree of “sentience” vary greatly. Counter-intuitive but true!) **4. Sensory-Motor Stage (rat, small baby)** - Can do a series of movements that are calibrated after one another and build upon one another to achieve something. - This includes putting several sounds together so that you can form a morpheme, at least in the language-prone species of humans (you can use combinations of sounds to “express something” but not yet use a full word consistently). - Rats, young baby humans. **5. Nominal Stage (pigeon, one-year-old toddlers)** - Can find relations among concept and make them into words: single words, exclamations, knowing the meaning of a word. “Nominal” because you can name stuff. - Can begin to understand what other organisms “mean”. - Laboratory pigeons, one-year-old toddlers. **6. Sentential Stage (two/three years old)** - Can put words together into _sentences_, and see a series of simple tasks that need to be coordinated, imitate a sequence. - This allows for the use of pronouns like I, mine, you, yours it, etc.—these being more abstract than names of things. - Parrots (as famously described by Irene Pepperberg; trained parrots can go up to this stage), cats, toddlers around two to three. **7. Pre-Operational Stage (three to five year olds)** - Can make simple deductions (but not spot contradictions), follow lists of sequential acts, and tell short stories (by coordinating several sentences). - Can use connectives (in humans): if, then, as, when, etc. Puts together several sentences into a “paragraph”. - Dogs and small children, three to five years old. **8. Primary Stage (five to seven years old)** - Can do logical deduction and use empirical rules; adds, subtracts, divides, multiplies, proves, does series of tasks on its own. - Can relate to times, places, can count acts and relate to separate actors. Can construct relatively coherent narratives (“groups of paragraphs”); these create accounts and ideas about what’s going on. - Chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys; in humans, five to seven year olds. **9. Concrete Stage (seven to eleven)** - Can do long division, follow complex social rules, takes on roles and coordinates self with others. - Can create meaningful, concrete stories and keep the same story intact and consequential over time. Puts together groups of paragraphs into a story. Can thus keep track of interrelations (which is the best tool, and how would you test it, etc.), social events, what happened among others, reasonable deals, history, geography. - Normal in humans at ages seven to eleven, but also a significant portion of the adult population. In the famous bonobo chimpanzee studies of Frans de Waal, there are examples of concrete stage behaviors, such as testing several tools to determine which is the best one. **10. Abstract Stage (ages eleven to fourteen)** - Can form abstract ideas and thoughts: single, generalized variables that fall beyond the concrete sequences of events in a story—can make and quantify abstract propositions. - Relates to categories and uses “cases of events” to incrementally improve the understanding of these categories. - Humans eleven and older, a significant part of the adult population, about 30%. No known non-human animals. **11. Formal Stage (ages fourteen to eighteen, if at all)** - Can identify relations between abstract variables and reflect upon these relations, devise ways to test them, etc. Solves problems using algebra with one unknown, uses logic and empiricism. - Can speak a full, rich language with self-reflection, uses logical sequences of connectives: _if_ this, _then_ that, in all cases. - Fourteen years and onwards. The most common stage in adult human beings, about 40% of the adult population—only a minority go beyond this stage. **12. Systematic Stage (eighteen and above, if at all)** - Can identify patterns among linear relationships, thus forming systems of relations among abstract variables and how these interact. Can thereby also solve equations with several unknowns. The first “postformal” stage, i.e. it was not described by Piaget, but implicated in Kohlberg’s work. - Begins to discuss legal systems, social structures, ecosystems, economic systems and the like. - Can be found in about 20% of adult humans, usually after age eighteen. **13. Metasystematic Stage (early twenties and above, if at all)** - Can compare and synthesize several systems with differing logics, put together “metasystems” or conclusions that hold true across different system, reflect upon and name general properties of systems**.** - Understands that things can be “homomorphic”, “isomorphic”, etc. This means that you can see how one system can be changed in corresponding or differing ways to another system. - Can be found in about 1.5% of the adult population, usually only after early twenties. **14. Paradigmatic Stage (mid-twenties and above, if at all)** - Can deal with several very abstract metasystems to create new ways of thinking of the world, new paradigms, new sciences or branches within sciences. - Has a fractal way of thinking, so that the universal principles found are applicable to many different levels of analysis and phenomena. - Prevalence unknown, but if the pattern holds and every stage seems to increase with about a standard deviation, it should be a little more than one adult in a thousand in a normal population, mostly at ages 25+. This makes it rare, but still some three million people in the world (one thousandth of the functional adults above 25). Although the stage is theoretically formulated, there is no reliable test for it. **15. Crossparadigmatic Stage (late twenties and above, if at all)** - Can deal with several paradigms to create new fields. - Examples are: Newton’s reformulation of physics, Darwin’s theory of evolution, Einstein’s theory of relativity, the invention of quantum physics, the invention of chaos mathematics and complexity, the invention of computing, the invention of postmodern philosophy, the invention of the holistic “integral theory” of Ken Wilber, the invention of string theory, the invention of the MHC theory. - Prevalence unknown, found only in adults older than twenty and who have privileged circumstances. It most often shows up around 30. No reliable test for this stage. # Stages 10-13 Stages 10-13 cover 90% of a normal human population. Here are some examples of the types of arguments you might see at different stages. ## Anti-Racist argument Stage 10: Racism is bad: It is a self-contained and self-explanatory essence that spreads by itself unless you stop it, causing discrimination and possibly tyranny and war. Stage 11: Racism results from economic and social inequalities in society and causes further inequality and discrimination. Stage 12: Racism is an emergent property of all societies and interacts with things like inequality. Blaming and pointing fingers is generally unproductive and one should instead try to address the long-term issues that may be causing ethnic tensions under these particular circumstances. Stage 13: Racism emerges as different cultures and status hierarchies interact, where ethnic markers are used in order to increase one’s position in the status hierarchy. It should be prevented by the creation of both greater psychological security and by the facilitation of productive dialogue about cultural differences. ## Conservative argument Stage 10: The Arabicness inherent to Arabs gives them traits that are irreconcilable with Western civilization. Stage 11: Some cultural norms followed by Arabs may be irreconcilable with Western civilization. Stage 12: There are challenges in reconciling Western and Islamic culture which depend on how these categories interact, rather than flaws inherent to either category. Stage 13: Liberal values prevalent in Western countries may be more functional in late modern society than the more traditionalist values of many Arab Muslims, but for the successful integration of these different cultures one must take the perspectives of all parties seriously. ## Feminist argument Stage 10: Feminism means to stand up for women and crush patriarchy. Stage 11: Feminism is to apply the principles of gender equality and to make these principles prevalent throughout society. Stage 12: Feminism means to work towards a long-term equilibrium where self-reproducing inequalities have petered out and people of all sexes and genders have less reason to feel insecure and frustrated. Stage 13: Feminism is an interest group movement as well as a social justice movement. As an interest group movement it must be weighed against other interests and perspectives. As a social justice movement it must be coordinated with other social justice issues such as class, ethnicity, global inequality, other gender issues (including men’s issues), and the exploitation of animals and nature. ## Libertarian argument Stage 10: The less state control, the better. Stage 11: The less state control, the better, except that maintaining law and order is necessary. To establish law and order may temporarily require increased state control in “failed state” areas. Stage 12: State control and policy implementation tend to have unexpected and unwanted consequences as society is always more complex than we recognize. It is therefore good to be restrictive with regulation and policy. Stage 13: State control and policy implementation always interact with other societal systems and are dependent upon these for their successful functioning. It is thus important to carefully weigh state regulation and policy against other possibilities: markets, culture, and civil sphere. State regulation is often not the best path ahead. ## Green argument Stage 10: Human greed causes crises and destroys the environment. Stage 11: The lacking proportionality between our emphasis on human interests, especially those of rich people, and the interests of animals and ecosystems, is what causes crises and destroys the environment. Stage 12: There are serious systemic flaws in our economic system that cause crises and may lead to ecological collapse. Stage 13: The logic inherent to the economic system is fundamentally alien to the logic of the ecosystems of the many biotopes. This means that there is no self-regulating feedback cycle directly present between our economic and technological expansion and the ecosystems upon which we depend. This lack of feedback means that we have to drive the ecosystem to collapse before the market self-adjusts. We must thereby create some other feedback, e.g. by means of policy, public awareness or cultural development. ## Day-to-day politics Stage 10: I am frustrated both by high taxes and low spending; by both high unemployment and low starting wages. Stage 11: I see a trade-off between high taxes and high spending, between low unemployment and high starting wages. Stage 12: Public spending should carefully follow and counter international trends—this optimizes the labor market. But the labor market can unfortunately not be expected to function perfectly; it always lets some people down. Stage 13: Public spending can be high or low, where higher spending is generally made possible by strong institutions such as rule of law, policing, democracy and free press. This keeps corruption down and allows for public support of spending and makes spending less wasteful. There is no one answer about high or low taxes; you have to coordinate it with the other societal systems. --- This conversation with Nora Bateson, Maimunah Mosly and Jon Freeman is an important discussion about the usefulness and potential harms of stage development theories: <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tftgnVbr7fU" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>