Jean Piaget: Genetic Epistemology

1. Jean Piaget: Genetic Epistemology • “Under the converging influence of a series of factors, we are tending more and more today to regard knowledge as a process, more than a state... • Any being (or object) that sciences attempt to hold fast dissolves once again in the current of development. • It is the last analysis of this development, and of it alone, that we have the right to state “It is (a fact).” What we can and should then seek is the law of this process. (We are well aware, on the other hand, of the fine book by Kuhn on “scientific revolutions.”...

2. In fact, if all knowledge is always in a state of development and consists in proceeding from one state to a more complete and efficient one, evidently it is a question of knowing this development and analyzing it with the greatest possible accuracy.

3. Upon what does an individual base his judgements? • What are his norms?How is it that these norms are validated? • What is the interest of such norms for the philosophy of science in general? • (How does the fact that children think differently affect our presumption of fact itself?)

4. Problems • Number and space • Time and speed • Permanent objects, identity, and conservation • Chance • Moral concerns • Play patterns and dreams • Imitation of others

5. Constructivism: • “There is no structure apart from construction, either abstract or genetic” • cognitive or physiological • “Knowledge does not begin in the I, and it does not begin in the object; it begins in the interactions.... There is a reciprocal and simultaneous construction of the subject on the one hand, and the object on the other.”

6. Developmental course • The stage theory: equilibration • adaptation: assimilation and accomodation (Kuhn): TRANSFORMATION • “Whereas other animals cannot alter themselves except by changing their species, man can transform himself by transforming the world and can structure himself by constructing structures; and these structures are his own, for they are not eternally predestined either from within or from without.” • “The organism adapts itself by materially constructing new forms to fit them into those of the universe, whereas intelligence extends this creation by constructing mental structures which can be applied to those of the environment.”

7. The notion of the developmental stage • Constant orderly acquisition of behaviors • Integration of such behaviors across succeeding levels • with proviso that this integration completes earlier development, and sets the stage for further • with proviso that integration appears total

8. Motive for development: disequilibria • What is done does not produce the intended (desired) end.

10. Capacity for development: analogy to LOGOS • Heraclitus and the “permanency” of the river, despite its movement • The Christian Logos -- the Word -- and the creation of the world • decentration: out of one scheme, into the domain of scheme construction (chaos) • goodbye lovely rut (centration)

11. 1.0. Infancy • Birth to age two • The undifferentiated experience • Egocentricity without ego

12. 1.1. Sensorimotor Period • Practical intelligence without “thought” • Action schemata (for mouth, eyes, hand, feet) • New objects are explored with action schemata • estalishment of percepts

13. 1.2. Reflex action (first half of first year) • Behavior limited to sucking, and then head turning • Behaviors are practiced and generalized • Child imitates own reflexes, and brings them under control: the circular reaction: the cybernetic loop (the feedback loop) • The mind begins its development by interiorizing the (observable) structures of the body.

14. “Each object is assimilated as something “to be sucked,” “to be grasped,” “to be shaken,” etc., and is at first that and nothing more (and if it is “to be looked at” it is still being assimilated to the various focusings and movements of the eyes and acquires the “shapes” which perceptive assimilation gives it)....

15. it is by repeating his behaviors through reproductive assimilation that the child assimilates objects to actions, and that these become schemas. These schemas constitute the functional equivalent of concepts and of the logical relationships of later development.” • Piaget, Explanation of Play. Play, Dreams and Imitation.

16. 1.2.1. The scheme • “What there is in common among several different and analogous actions.” • distance: the fact of distance remains constant across situations • shared schemes serve as the referents for language • “A structure would lose all truth value if it did not have this connection with the physical facts.” • as opposed to the concept: which appears as a declarative representation

17. We first act, and then form an image of what needs doing. • “... the whole process of development, starting out with perception and culminating in intelligence, demonstrates clearly that transformations continually increase in importance, as opposed to the original predominance of static perceptual forms.” • perception: knowledge of an object from direct contact with it. • intelligence uses the mental image: the imitative schemata (representation) • the concept is an abstracted image (semantic representation of an episodic representation) • the Freudian “symbol” is mere use of earlier schemata

18. 1.3. Imitation (second half of first year) • Assimilation of the motor schemata of the observed other: prehension

19. 1.4. Sensorimotor intelligence includes • Sense of distribution of surrounding space • Perception of objects within that space • Notion of causality as relationship between appearances, mediated by action • Beginning of time

20. 1.5. “Object permanence” - end of second year. • “Another example of an unforeseeable encounter between the recent history of sciences and psychogenesis is furnished by the notion of object permanence. • This permanence, which at the beginning of the century appeared evident and necessary, was, as we all know, questioned by contemporary microphysics, for which an object exists as an object (in opposition to its wave) only in so far as it is localizable. • It can therefore be interesting to attempt to establish how the object notion has been formed, since it no longer appears enveloped in the same characteristic necessity its earlier history seemed to confer upon it.”

21. 2.0. Early childhood: Two to seven years

22. 2.1. Socialization of Action • Establishment of verbal communication • Facilitation of imitation thereby (the ego ideal) • Lack of self-awareness • No ability for discussion (collective monologue)

23. 2.2. Genesis of Thought • Preoperational thought: transition from sensorimotor intelligence to operational intelligence (abstraction) • Concrete operations: use of the thing, or the immediate imagination of the thing • Precausality: tendency towards anthropomorphization: Childhood animism • The child does not think like the pre-empirical man; the pre-empirical man thinks like the child.

24. Children of this age are “practically unanimous in believing that the moon accompanies them on a walk, and their egocentricity impedes them from thinking what the moon would do in the presence of people strolling in the opposite direction.” • The universe operates like the human being: things want to do things

25. 2.3. Moral realism: attention to the letter of the law. • “... moral realism induces an objective conception of responsibility.... for since he takes rules literally and thinks of good only in terms of obedience, the child will at first evaluate acts not in accordance with the motive that has prompted them but in terms of their exact conformity with established rules.”

26. “The combined effect of precausality, childhood animism, and moral realism on the psychology of the child is to present a world of intentional beings and objects, all focusing on the child, doing things for the child, and yet conforming to a set of rules that have no special justification but exist merely to be obeyed.” • Rychlak, p. 694

27. 2.4. Intuition • The use of a sensorimotor schema as basis for abstract thought

28. “A child of four or five years may be shown a series of eight blue discs aligned in a row with little spaces between each, and be asked to reproduce the series by selecting red disks from a pile.

29. The child will intuitively construct an arrangement of red disks in a row of exactly the same length as the blue disks but without bothering to keep the number of disks identical, and without considering the matter of spacing between the disks.” • Rychlak, p. 695

30. O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O O

31. The child can not yet think about the different ways (schemas) of analyzing and then duplicating the structure of the row. Furthermore, the row is analogous to a rod (a sensorimotor object).

32. 2.5. Semilogic: two brothers. One is asked do you have a brother? Does Paul (his brother) have a brother? [no] • egocentricity makes reversibility impossible

33. 2.6. Beginnings of self evaluation

34. 2.7. Necessity for environmental stability: • presuppositions must remain constant

35. 3.0. Late Childhood: Seven to Twelve

36. 3.1. Elimination of egocentricity • development of self-model, equivalent to the other • more concentration on life tasks • more ability to collaborate (facilitate social construction)

37. 3.2. Self-reflection emerges • “Reflection is nothing other than internal deliberation, that is to say, a dialogue which is conducted with oneself” • Relationship to Jung’s notion of personification of the dissociated personality elements

38. 3.3. Conservation emerges • Two identical glasses, one taller narrower glass. • Two girls, Bridget (4) and Annette (7)

39. Both are asked to place equal numbers of red beads in the first glass, and blue beads in the second. Red beads are then poured into the third glass.

40. When askedWhich has more beads (second or third)? Bridget (4) says third; Annette (7) says neither. Annette (7) interrelates volume and shape schema; Bridget (4) relies on notion of height to define “more”.

41. Conservation is “possibility of rigorous return to the point of departure”

42. 3.4. Development of morality • “since all men, including ‘primitive men,” started by being children, childhood thinking preceded the thought of our own ancestors, just as it does our own!” • Piaget differentiates "morality of constraint" from "morality of cooperation," describing morality as a "system of rules” that affective life makes use of to control behavior:

43. "...moral realism induces an objective concept of responsibility.... For since he takes rules literally and things of good only in terms of obedience, the child will at first evaluate acts not in accordance with the motive that has prompted them but in terms of their exact conformity with established rules."

44. He associates morality of constraint with an earlier level of cognitive development; a level that nonetheless serves as a necessary precondition for further development. Piaget states: • "For very young children, a rule is a sacred reality because it is traditional; for the older ones it depends upon mutual agreement. "

45. The second-stage child, who accepts the presuppositions of his cultural sub-tradition as "sacred and untouchable", thinks in the same manner as the classic pre-empirical or "primitive" man, who worships the past, in representation, as absolute truth.

46. The child and the primitive are both concerned primarily with how to behave -- with how to organize behavior, contra nature, in the social community, to simultaneously and continuously meet desirable ends. It is only much later, after these most fundamental of issues have been resolved, that the means of resolution themselves can be questioned.

47. This act of higher-order conceptualization means emergence of ability to play games, with the rules of games -- and belief in the justifiability of such activity (this rebuff to traditional order).

48. This more abstract ability allows for answer to the meta-problem of morality: not "how to behave?" but -- how can (or is or was) how to behave be determined?"

49. Paradoxically, perhaps, the answer to this meta-problem also provides the final answer to the (apparently) less abstract question "how to behave?" or "what is the good?"

50. Some examples from western religious tradition may aid in comprehending (1) the distinction between the central problem ("what is the good (?)") and meta-problem ("how are answers to the question ‘what is the good?’ determined?") of morality, and their attendant resolutions