Acquisition of Knowledge Without Transcendental Assistance: An Extended Piagetian Approach (original) (raw)
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Piagetian Theory of Cognitive Development
Encyclopedia of Child and Adolescent Development, 2020
Traditionally, cognitive development (see Studying Cognitive Development in School-Aged Children) focuses on two questions: What changes are observed throughout development in terms of depth of understanding, robustness of reasoning and the ability to solve problems, and the differential accumulation and effectiveness of knowledge acquisition? And how and why do changes occur? Jean Piaget (see Piaget's Theory), major founder of and pioneer in the field of cognitive development for many years, was the first scholar to give substantive answers to these questions. To fully comprehend his view on cognitive development, one must be aware of Piaget's scientific origins. Piaget was a biologist, interested in the study of epistemology (the nature and origins of knowledge) through psychological methods, which he explored in Binet's psychometric laboratory in Paris. These three scientific fields contributed to the formulation of his theory.
The epistemological significance of Piaget’s developmental stages
New Ideas in Psychology, 1998
A review of the literature shows that there is considerable debate as to the epistemological significance of Piaget's developmental stages. Many of the critics have rejected Piaget's theory on the grounds that stage-like development is too heterogeneous. The objective of this article is to demonstrate that most of the critics have misconstrued the significance of Piaget's stages in human intellectual development and that stages were not an end in themselves but rather a heuristic to explain the process of equilibration. It is suggested that the stages be considered as part of the Lakatosian positive heuristic. As the function of the positive heuristic within a Lakatosian framework is precisely to ''operationalize'' the hard core (i.e. means to an end), Piagetian stages if construed as part of the positive heuristic would facilitate the understanding of equilibration -the hard core of the Piagetian research program.
Genetic Epistemology, From Jean Piaget's Own Words and Works
Kínesis, 2024
The principal intention and meaning of Jean Piaget's work is difficult to grasp, particularly due to its great length and depth, and some widely spread general misconceptions about it. In order to help clarify it, and furnish data for the discussions about it, this article aims to expose and clarify, in general lines, Piaget's main project: Genetic Epistemology. The intention here is to point out its motive and constitution, from Piaget's own published works and words. In the end, the data analysis shows that the main intention and meaning of Piaget's work was to build a new chapter in Epistemology, Theory of Knowledge and Philosophy of Science, founding and establishing Genetic Epistemology: a new inter-, trans-and multidisciplinary area, directly bound to the scientific methods and contents, and their geneses, especially related to Genetic and Cognitive Psychologies and History of Science. As the outcome, this area furnished various studies of scientific notions and concepts, including their geneses, many analyses of the methods of various sciences, and studies on the System of Sciences, as well as more detailed studies of the elements necessary for the acquisition of knowledge, with concepts so close to the experience that they are immediately applicable.
Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 1991
According to Piaget, a fundamental epistemological distinction must be made between the psychological and the epistemic subject. The epistemic subject is studied by the genetic epistemologist who charts development through a "common universal rationality, which develops," whereas the psychological subject is studied by the developmentalkognitive psychologist by focusing on accidental contingencies surrounding particular people and their individual differences. The epistemic subject as compared to the psychological subject is an idealized abstraction, viz., that set of underlying epistemic structures common to everyone at the same level of development. The objective of this study is to investigate the degree to which investigators in science education conceptualize the difference between the epistemic and the psychological subjects. It is argued that just as the ideal gas law (based on the theoretical formulation of Maxwell and Boltzmann) provides a "general model" to which the real gases approximate under different experimental conditions, so we can consider (by abduction) the epistemic subject to be an "ideal knower" to which the real (psychological) subjects approximate to varying degrees. The difference between the epistemic and the psychological subjects, however, cannot be used as an "epistemological shield' in defense of Piagetian theory. Any test of the Piagetian theory must involve psychological or real subjects. Empirical testability, however, need not be equated to being scientific. An analogy is drawn between Galileo's idealization, which led to the discovery of the law of freefall, and Piaget's epistemic subject. Research conducted in science education shows that at least for some critics the wide variations in the age at which individuals acquire the different Piagetian stages is crucial for rejecting the theory. It is argued that the real issue is not the "proportion of heterogeneity" but the understanding that Piaget, by neglecting individual differences, attempts to build a general model applicable across types of situations/subjects. The distinction between the epistemic and the psychological subjects is important not for defending Piaget's theory (which has serious theoretical flaws) but to understand epistemic transitions, for example, the one between Piaget's epistemic subject and Pascual-Leone's metasubject. It is concluded that failure to understand the distinction between the epistemic and the psychological subjects would lead to misconstruing the significance of our research findings and, what is more serious, to a lack of a historical perspective.