ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the connection between virtue theory and social structures, and there it is primarily the empirical hypotheses. Jean Piaget's The Moral Judgment of the Child proposes a staged account of moral development in which both cognitive development and social experience play fundamental roles in the child's progress from 'heteronomous' moral judgment to 'autonomous' moral judgments. A convenient resource for relevant information from experimental social psychology is the series edited by Leonard Berkowitz, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. John Rawls gives an account of moral development in A Theory of Justice. He says he draws upon the work of psychologists William McDougall, Jean Piaget, and Lawrence Kohlberg. Rawls account makes reference to three 'stages', each governed by a psychological law or tendency.
