Ethical development must continue into adulthood

You introduce a distinction between ethics and morality parsing the difference at a learning component in the one (ethics) and not in the other (morality, where there is only learning or education). (1.) One may be able to learn both ethically and morally (as said, learning morality occurs by learning maxims or commandments--even by watching tragedy to assess the tragic error of the hero and whether or not his character is proportionate to the judgments and actions causing his tragic error, i.e., Oedipus in Sophocles). Thus, (2a.) I wouldn't say ethical development has to do with learning the objects of study in the field of morality; however, (2b.) I do claim there is learning occurring in moral and ethical development but the objects of study are different. Your overstatement uses a narrow conception of development. Your example of failing to complete development resulting in excess assumes (a.) that development is a linear process and (b.) that development cannot be an action which becomes stagnant or degenerates. But, take for instance a speaker of a foreign tongue, such an individual may want to develop their ability to speak that foreign language in many different styles—one day like Dostoevsky, the next Tolstoy, the weekend like Turgenev—but their goal may not be to achieve the ability to speak a foreign tongue in many different styles, the goal might be to have room for play in that foreign tongue—hence, development would not necessarily go on to excess, their development may branch into three different styles or routes (making it, perhaps, not such a linear process) periodically so as to wade in the motions of doing so in order that they may have the level of play desired in that tongue. When I am speaking of development (1.) I don't mean a process which is mired by the limit of a threshold or the problem of excess in the way you have hashed it. When someone completes a stage of development and comes into adulthood (2.) new instances of development may become available because the previous cycle of development allow these new opportunities to arise. Counterexample of the lunar cycle. Again, the problem I have (and perhaps it is my fault for not being more specific about my terms) with your complicating the concept of development is the conception of development you're proposing. (a.) The stipulation I find implicit in your using the example of the moon is that in development there is no room for regression. (b.) The problem with not allowing for room for regression is that one must stipulate that once a capacity is developed then there must be no looking back—what does one say to the Latinist who believes that, although the Latinist can read well, there are a number of troubles with the way the Latinist came to fluency and would thus like to reverse their training in Latin to polish off problematic points or simply to review once again how one becomes a reader of Latin? (c.) Most immediately present to me as a counterclaim would be that your example of the moon is difficult because as an example it retards the way a human being would development—that is, it would be odd for one to develop into a full grown man and then to become a baby again, but, if you were willing to assume non-linear examples of development and cease from conceiving of development as a threshold problem, it would be easy to see that often one may need to reverse a bit into a position in order to envelop oneself out of it better than, perhaps, one had done so before (or, in other words, in development, sometimes a step back is the best way to develop). The imperative claim ethical development must reach full capacity before adulthood. You impose the issue of addressing the challenges of the world; but you expanded the discussion into an issue not within our scope because (1.) it's broad, (2.) it's general and (3.) the original issue was ethical development as opposed to moral development (presumably in the individual, I hadn't made it into an issue for society as a whole but, as I framed it, an issue for the adult), again, we're not expanding our scope into the whole world--rather, we'll stick to the original issue, whether or not ethical development must continue into adulthood. Thus, ethical development must not, as I have put it, be "complete" or reach "full capacity" before adulthood. (1.) If one is to stipulate that ethical development must reach capacity then one must provide the consequences, if that is not the case. (Hence, as one can see, the problem of facing the challenges of the world becomes complex here.) Should one provide those consequences then one, obviously, must make clear whether or not the consequences are occurring or whether they are being avoided and thus other circumstances become the norm or the case. (2.) Ethical development does not have to reach "full capacity", if that were the case there would be no room for improvement—and if there were not room for improvement then I would be hard pressed to find those individuals who have reached "full capacity." (3.)Moreover, I would not go as far as to say that ethical development must not reach development. The original issue was whether or not it must continue into adulthood, or, if I should put it in my opponents terms, the original issue was whether or not there were new stages, regressions or room for "full capacity" to be filled in and developed in adulthood—that is, put again, these capacities, as I stipulate there must be, are not necessarily capacities of a moral nature. Again, my claim is still that there must be a continuing of the development of those ethical capacities. As Aristotle had said, ethics is the art of habit (and by this he meant something less like a drug habit or a habit of pausing in the middle of a sentence, and he meant something more like a set of capacities which were dynamic and often came into action without one's needing to call upon them explicitly). It would be strange for there not be a need to develop one's affective capacities—whether this means one's capacity to feel or one's capacity to find distinction amongst the fog of one's emotions—because one would have to state that the "full capacity" adult makes distinctions in affective response without room for development of taste, details, style of response, etc. Such a claim, one which would state that there is no need to develop non intellectual capacities, ethical capacities, assumes that (a.) one is always provided with capacities for a response fitting to the circumstances and that (b.) one cannot improve the capacities for a response fitting to the circumstances to make one's response not just good but great! That is, I'm not worried about facing the challenges of the world (whatever that means), I'm worried about the individual developing the ability to face another individual better, getting the most out of conduct. Your claim about fighting to maintain our complete and fully developed capacity—"not allowing for any change in the status quo"—is a non-issue, it doesn't realize the possibility that improvement does not mean that other capacities diminish. Your last two claims of (1.) a waning capacity and (2.) survival, a mark establishing full capacity. (1.) Your stipulation that moral decisions are compromised by the continuing project of developing ethical capacities is troublesome: it assumes that the one does not complement the other. The problem with moral development is that it isn't nearly as important as the affective capacities and the contributions of character required to set oneself in the best position, perhaps, perceptually speaking, in order to make a moral decision—frankly, learning maxims is just too simple, making decisions is just too quick. (2.) Survival?—Even the most uncouth and dangerous characters survive, some do so by means of a comfy and well cared for stay in a penitentiary.