Learning as an Internally Reconstructible Sequence of Stages of Competence (p. 3.2.mid)

Habermas’s view is that, to understand the cognitive and moral stages of development experienced by a person or a society, one must take an internal position and reconstruct the presupposed structures that people employ in their learning experiences. An external observer can see the contents and uses of learning experienced by that person or culture, but cannot understand the experience itself. Nor can one infer the experience of individual development from an observation of higher stages of cultural cognitive and moral development.