Re: [xmca] Piaget's Periods

[Martin Packer <packer@duq.edu>]

On Feb 10, 2011, at 9:04 PM, David Kellogg wrote:

> more than mildly brilliant. 

Thank you, David. I generally shoot for bitterly brilliant, and usually hit mildly stupid.

I don't disagree with much of what you say about Piaget. I suspect he knew of LSV's critique before the 1960s, and I suspect he didn't pay much attention. Anyone who received 80 honorary degrees in his lifetime didn't need to pay much attention to criticism. Did he develop? I think he was *always* a genetic epistemologist; I am not sure he ever saw himself as a psychologist, so in that sense no. He was interested, it seems to me, in how a biological organism (a baby) becomes a logical organism (a scientist), one who has certain and necessary knowledge. In that respect he was thoroughly Kantian, though he felt Kant had gone 'too far' (as he put it, if I recall) in assuming that the categories of the transcendental ego were innate. Even his interest in morality clearly had Kantian roots. He was more an empirical philosopher  than a psychologist; not that that's a bad thing to be. The same might be said of LSV, but his philosophical starting point was very different. 

And I agree that, as you suggest, it is very important to recognize the importance LSV attributed to practical activity. It runs through the length of Thought & Language - from the preface where he says that it is the book's practical task that unifies its parts - and of course in Crisis he insisted that practical concerns would drive the new, general psychology.

Martin__________________________________________
_____
xmca mailing list
xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
http://dss.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/xmca