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The Ethical Implications of the Five-Stage Skill-Acquisition Model

University of California, Berkeley

Stuart E. Dreyfus

University of California, Berkeley

We assume that acting ethically is a skill. We then use a phenomenological description of five stages of skill acquisition to argue that an ethics based on principles corresponds to a beginner’s reliance on rules and so is developmentally inferior to an ethics based on expert response that claims that, after long experience, the ethical expert learns to respond appropriately to each unique situation. The skills model thus supports an ethics of situated involvement such as that of Aristotle, John Dewey, and Carol Gilligan against the detached, rationalist ethics of Kant, John Rawls, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Jürgen Habermas.

Key Words: human skill acquisition • ethical expertise • moral maturity • phenomenology • expertise

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