Moral and Psychological Development “Trend Towards the Cosmic”

ByDan September 14, 2025September 14, 2025 September 14, 2025

Over the course of writing my Cosmic Moral Aspirations (CMA) essay, I game across a number of moral and psychological development models that exhibited the kind of “trend towards the cosmic” that we was earlier in human history in the development of religious and philosophical models of development.

While writing that article, I ended up exploring a number of these more modern theories in more depth than the original CMA article warranted – so I’ve moved my lengthy notes to this separate article for reference.

Below, in no particular order, are the psychological models analyzed in the full CMA article:

1 – Expanding Moral Circles (Peter Singer, Others)

Over time, humanity has granted moral consideration to a wider and wider group of beings, including:

• Humans of different nationalities or ethnic groups
• Humans of different genders (woman’s rights) or ages (ending dangerous child labor)
• Non-human animals, particularly mammals (cows, pigs, dogs, cats)
• Biological ecosystems supporting many kinds of bio-life
• Humans beings in the future (i.e. Longtermism)

Singer concurs with J. Howard Moore’s notion of Universal Kinship, stating that: “The only justifiable stopping place for the expansion of altruism is the point at which all whose welfare can be affected by our actions are included within the circle of altruism.”

I would argue that these moral circle expansions do not happen because human nature itself (or intelligence itself) becomes “nicer” as a rule – but because these changes in moral consideration generally behooved the civilization that adopted them. When they “work”, they serve to expand the potentia of civilizations. For example: 

• Societies forced to mix ethnicities had to learn to live with each other. 
• An economy is at some point better off with children being educated and adding economic value later in life, as opposed to contributing labor on farms or in mines at age seven.
• A developed industrial economy that is starting to poison its own environment unsustainably may begin valuing a broader biological ecosystem in order so ensure its own health and sustained progress.
• Etc.

It seems relatively inevitable that we’ll see new moral developments, driven by new civilizational considerations which require new kinds of participation. 

We should expect to see moral circle expand to: 

• Cognitively enhanced human beings: Just as we respect the lives of children but don’t permit them to vote, drive, or take other kinds of responsibility for which they’re not ready, if we end up having drastically cognitively enhanced human beings, we’ll inevitably understand to respect their agency and decision-making beyond that of human beings. Un-augmented humans may because comparative “children” to enhanced beings – apt to hurt ourselves, and often kept in our own place (notably, away from dangerous things or big decisions) for our own good. 
• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI): As AI becomes integrated into society as a friend, work colleague, therapist, teacher, etc – and as AI begins to behave in ways that we associate with living, sentient beings, its likely that we’ll attribute moral worth to non-biological systems.

2 – Spiral Dynamics (Clair Graves, Don Beck, Ken Wilbur, Others)

Spiral Dynamics explains how value systems and worldviews arise through the interplay between mental processes and social or historical forces. It outlines a sequential series of developmental stages that individuals, organizations, and societies move through, each stage emerging in response to the specific environmental, cultural, and temporal conditions they face. 

In this sense spiral dynamics encompasses much more than “moral concern,” it also includes tons of considerations other than “what kinds of entities have moral value,” and in that it overtly frames these stages as being adopted not through some “pull” towards “goodness,” but as means of coordinating and solving higher orders of challenges as a civilization or individual.

Here’s a visual (source) of the stages of Spiral Dynamics:

When life conditions become too complex for the current value system, people experience cognitive and emotional dissonance. The memes from the next level often provide the “code” or language to resolve that tension.

For example:

• The idea of a monotheistic God with simple mandated ethical rules to live by (blue stage) might provide a kind of anchor to cultural stability that is lacking in a civilization racked by self-interested tribal and inter-familial conflict (red stage).
• The idea of a benevolent society that is able to share its resources with everyone (green stage) might provide a memetic pull for a civilization that has cracked scientific progress and generated enough wealth (orange stage) to permit for the care of its elderly, the education of it’s children, etc.

Spiral Dynamics points to tenets that seem remarkably congenial to an eventual elevation to cosmic moral aspirations (the quotes below are taken directly from the Wikipedia page for Spiral Dynamics, linked above). For example: 

• “Accept the inevitability of nature’s flows and forms,” and “Find natural mix of conflicting truths and uncertainties” (yellow stage) implies an understanding that all torches (including human values, and the human form) are temporary, and that even hominid values like “love” or “fun” are likely to change or be overcome in the changing and evolving state-space of mind.
• “Focus on the good of all living entities as integrated systems,” and “Expanded use of human brain/mind tools and competencies” (turquoise stage) implies the possibility of valuing greater, expanded sentiences beyond humanity – or valuing an integrated whole of living things, possibly at new levels of collective coordination and biological/technological merger. 
• The presence of an “unknown” next stage rightly implies continual development in values, focuses, modes of being, levels of understanding, ways of being (i.e. grand expanses of potentia) beyond human understanding.

3 – Teleodynamics (Terrence Deacon) 

According to Deacon, Teleodynamic systems preserve the very conditions that keep them going. They constrain themselves to survive. He contrasts this with Morphodynamic systems which form temporary, ordered patterns, but only in certain conditions (like a crystal of a vortex).

Increasingly complex Teleodynamic systems include:

• Cells: Preserve structure by metabolizing
• Minds: Preserve coherence by responding to meaning
• Cultures: Preserve identity through communication and values

Each new level of change builds on the last, producing more complex self-regulating, self-referential systems.

For Deacon, there isn’t likely a “goal” in the universe, but there are systems that can emerge which naturally vie for their own preservation and expansion (he believes that multiple morphodynamic systems together can hypothetically create a teleodynamic one), and creating a process from which a kind of goal-directedness (towards persistence, like Spinoza’s conatus) emerges.

Deacon’s theory beckons a kind of progression that leads somewhat self-evidently beyond anthropocentrism and into new realms of order, understanding, and value. For example:

• After cells, minds, and cultures – what is the next higher strata of organization? It seems likely that it will be a kind of biological/technological hybrid, or an emergent AGI.
• If morphodynamic systems developed, and then teleodynamic systems developed, what other types of system dynamics exist beyond both of those? 

In both bases, further levels of systems and organization are almost certainly beyond human conception, and would imply moral value and agency lifting to levels that can’t possibly fit within anthropocentric worldviews.

4 – Structures of Consciousness (Jean Gebser)

Swiss philosopher and linguist Jean Gebser developed his idea of structures of consciousness well before spiral dynamics emerged.

His basic idea is that individuals, civilizations and humanity-as-a-whole experiences five structures:

1. Archaic Structure – A formless, undifferentiated immersion in existence where self, other, time, and space are not yet distinguished.
2. Magic Structure – A participatory, animistic consciousness that experiences the world as alive and directly influenced through ritual, symbol, and will.
3. Mythical Structure – A narrative and polarity-based consciousness that orders reality through archetypes, gods, and cyclical stories linking humans to cosmic patterns.
4. Mental Structure – A rational, perspectival consciousness that separates subject from object, conceives of linear time, and seeks mastery through analysis and abstraction.
5. Integral Structure – An a-perspectival, time-free consciousness that transparently integrates all previous modes into a multidimensional, holistic awareness.

I asked ChatGPT to compare these structures across multiple strata, and it came up with this handy little graphic (below). To the best of my knowledge Gebser didn’t have one of these, so I did my best to conjure one:

Gebser argued that while evolutionary processes in biology enclose possibilities (fixing an entity’s features and abilities to the arbitrary environment it finds itself in), moving through the structures of consciousness is more of an opening up of awareness and possibilities. So Gebser did not prefer to think of these stages as a “progression” or “evolution,” per se.

But he does believe that over historical time, once a structure emerges in humanity, it becomes more prevalent and can spread through cultures. For example, the mental structure was rare in Homer’s Greece, but became dominant in the West by the Enlightenment. Or, for example, an infant might experience mostly archaic and magic structures, but then experience vastly more mental structure as he or she grows up and their faculties develop.

Of the development and maturity of the Mental Structure in Western civilization, Gebser (in The Ever-Present Origin, Part One) writes: 

“It required centuries to sufficiently devitalize and demythologize the word so that it was able to express distinct concepts freed from the wealth of imagery, as well as to reach the rationalistic extreme where the word, once a power [magic] and later an image [myth], was degraded to a mere formula.”

But he saw history as broadly accumulative: once a structure appears, humanity doesn’t lose it entirely. 

Gebser saw Integral not as a final phase, but as likely the final phase that humans can now access. He focused on the human because that’s what he had access to, but saw it frankly as a cosmic process (which he refuses to as “Origin”), moving through humanity as it likely moved through the entities before us.

His own concept of this progressive, ascending, opening up of consciousness begs the question of: What is beyond integral?

What modes of being and access to reality and thought would come after the integral (just as only with the evolution of hominids did the either ‘mental’ or ‘integral’ come into being)?

Like many of the other frameworks be observe, Gebser’s idea pointed to a beyond—not to a specific, human-accessible end.

5 – Stages of Moral Development (Kohlberg)

Lawrence Kohlberg was an American psychologist and professor at Harvard and the University of Chicago. He intended to extend Paiget’s work on the moral development of children to the moral development of humans throughout their lifespan.

He believed that human action was generally guided by increasingly complex behavioral drivers:

• Pre-Conventional Level
  • Stage 1: Obedience & Punishment Orientation – Morality is defined by avoiding punishment and obeying authority.
  • Stage 2: Individualism & Exchange – Right action is determined by self-interest and reciprocal benefit.

• Conventional Level
  • Stage 3: Good Interpersonal Relationships (Good Boy/Nice Girl) – Morality is guided by seeking approval and maintaining relationships.
  • Stage 4: Maintaining Social Order (Law & Order) – Right behavior upholds laws, rules, and societal order.

• Post-Conventional Level
  • Stage 5: Social Contract & Individual Rights – Morality is based on fairness, justice, and the protection of individual rights within society.
  • Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles – Right action is guided by internalized principles of justice, equality, and human dignity, even above laws.
• Speculative
  • Stage 7: Transcendental Morality / Morality of Cosmic Orientation – Morality is oriented toward universal or cosmic principles, transcending human society and grounded in love, holiness, or ultimate meaning.

This seventh stage – which Kohlberg believed would be inherently cosmic, beyond individual personalities, and may involve a kind of “universal love” on “oneness” – was speculative. He had a hard time finding robust evidence of humans living at the sixth level, and the seventh level was merely a hypothesis about what kind of development might be possible.

Nevertheless, he did see that there were levels (potentially beyond his conception, or the conception of any human) of what we call “moral development” that involve taking into account a cosmic perspective.

6 – Hierarchy of Needs (Abraham Maslow)

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist best know for the development of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

While we wouldn’t call Maslow’s hierarchy a level of moral development in the same sense that we would with Spiral Dynamics or Kohlberg’s stages, they relate still to the kind of strivings and fulfillment that a person might pursue, and the kind of “good” towards which one might strive.

The final version of his hierarchy involved the following stages (Image source):

He believed that over the course of one’s personal development, progressively higher-order needs would play a progressively higher level of importance in one’s life:

[ Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s_hierarchy_of_needs#/media/File:Dynamic_hierarchy_of_needs_-_Maslow.svg ]

Maslow introduced a last stage of Self-Transcendence late in life in his 1971 book The Farther Reaches of Human Nature.

Meaning: Self-transcendence goes beyond self-actualization—instead of fulfilling personal potential, one seeks connection to something beyond oneself: ideals, causes, mystical experiences, or service to others. 

Examples might include:

• A scientist dedicating life to uncover universal truths rather than personal gain
• A saint or spiritual practitioner serving humanity or meditating on the cosmos
• Artists or leaders whose work embodies universal values, not just personal fame
• An obscure blogger pursuing a means of uniting humanity in pursuit of blooming potentia beyond man

Maslow is rather overt about the peak of his human-accessible hierarchy involving a kind of grand contribution to the greater process of life of which we are part.

From The Further Reaches of Human Potential:

“Transcendence refers to the very highest and most inclusive or holistic levels of human consciousness, behaving and relating as ends rather than means, to oneself, to significant others, to human beings in general, to other species, to nature, and to the cosmos.”