From: Joe E. Dees (joedees@bellsouth.net)
Date: Fri Feb 18 2000 - 16:05:33 MST
The field of genetic epistemology was created and developed
by Jean Piaget (one of the three great French structuralists, along
wuth Claude Levi-Strauss and A. J. Greimas), who referred to his
position as constructivist, reflecting his conviction that structure
and function are inseparable in any particular instance (1970: 85-
93), and his certainty that the structures which he studied
demonstrated an evolving dynamic equilibration which is better
described by homeorhesis than homeostasis, and which
resembles Prigogine's dissipative structures (1975: 3-4). For
Piaget, the evolution, by construction, of more inclusive,
differentiated and interconnected structions from simpler, more
limited and more isolated ones involves the struggle for wholeness
by means of a system of self-regulating transformations (1968: 3-
16). This isomorphic psychgenesis of subject-knowledge and
object-knowledge proceeds through six levels; the senorimotor
level, the first and second levels of preoperational thought, the first
and second levels of concrete operations, and the level of formal
operations. The guiding principle in the continuous construction of
this system in human development is a dynamic dialectic between
assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation integrates, strives
for internal consistency of structure, and generates necessities,
while accommodation differentiates, strives for external coherency
between a structure and the many world-situations in which it
functions, and generates possibilities. This evolution of action
schemes is recapitulated in the learning of sign systems. For
instance, children learn to apply the signs "cat" and "dog" to the
concrete particular pets signified by these terms (or in other words
learn their meaning) before they integrate them into "animal" or
differentiate them into "persian", "siamese", "poodle", "terrier", etc.
(1983: 94-97). The interplay of these two processes is most
concisely presented in Piaget's two postulates which her makes
clear have been inductively derived from experiental resultes. They
are (1) "every assimilatory scheme tends to incorporate external
elements that are compatible with it", and (2) "Every assimilatory
scheme has to be accommodated to the elements it assimilates,
but the changes made to adapt it to an object's peculiarities must
be effected without loss of continuity" (1975: 6). In other words, an
infant may co-ordinate eye and hand in learning to grasp a rattle
lying beside it; the infant may then generalize this procedure to
allow it to grasp objects in different positions relative to it and/or of
different shapes and sizes without, however, losing what is specific
to the act of grasping the seen within the thicket of the act's
multiple particular elaborations. Assimilation plus accommodation
equals adaptation, or equilibration. Equilibration occurs between
"assimilation of objects to schemes of action and accommodation
of schemes of action to objects" (a "function of the fundamental
interconnection between subject and object"), between two
subsystems of a system (reciprocal assimilation leading to mutual
conservation), and between a system and its subsystems.
Equilibration also involves correspondence between affirmations
(yes, this element can be assimilated/accommodated) and
negations (no, this element can't be assimilated/accommodated),
or between similarity ans disparity in the aspect or aspects salient
to a scheme (1975: 5-10). The phenomenologist Aron Gurwitsch
considered dispositions and character traits, or "psychic
constants", to be formed in a like manner, as "systematic unities
of experienced facts rather than the facts themselves", and
demonstrating a causal unity (1985: 15-16).
Disequilibria result when a trial produces an error (when the
applied scheme fails), or when there is no suitable scheme
available to apply; in other words, disequilibrium results from
perturbations, defined as "anything that creates obstacles to
assimilation or to achieving a goal" (1975: 16). These perturbations
motivate "searching", a "strik[ing] out in new directions". Progress
results from the accommodation of an existing sheme to the task
or the assimilation of the task to an existing scheme, or from the
development of a ner scheme which succeeds, i.e. when
"disequilibria...give rise to developments that surpass what has
previously existed" (1975: 10-15). Obviously, feedback is essential
to this process; positive feedback reinforces a scheme, and
negative feedback undermines it. These complementary feedback
schemes are termed regulations, and they react to perturbations
by means of compensations.
Regulations may act to conserve or to modify schemes, or to
mediate between them. They may act by means of automatic
compensations, requiring little attention, or active compensations,
rwquiring a choice to be made or changed. For Piaget, active
regulations "lead to conscious awareness" and "lie at the source of
the representation or conceptualization of material actions." There
may be simple regulations, regulations of regulations, ttc.,
hierarchically ordered, up to autoregulations, which make self-
organization possible. The evolving system is open, that is, it
continually advances and never reaches completion, for there are
always further advances to be made, and novel situations to
confront. This process of equilibration towards ever better
equilibrium, i.e. more extensive, efficient, precise and
interconnected cognitive systems, Piaget calls optimization (1975:
16-26).
According to Piaget, cognizance "proceeds from the periphery
to the center(s)." Periphery is the interface between organism and
environment (therefore peripheral to both), and lies in the relation
between proprioceived bodily action and perceived worldly
phenomena (which according to merleau-Ponty are correlational
and mutually grounding). Center (S) is the subject's operational
scheme, and Center (O) is the array of intrinsic properties
attributed to the object. Movement from the periphery towards one
center is correlational with movement toward the other, thus the
"understanding of objects" and the "conceptualization of actions"
advance isomorphically.
Extending Piaget's model of human development, Lewis and
Brooks-Gunn have investigated the ontogeny of human self-
recognition by means of mirror studies of infants. The area is
important, due to the fact that chimpanzees, bonoboes, gorillas
and orangutans, the only nonhuman terrestrial life forms who have
arguably been able to learn prephonemic sign systems (although
not to create them), are also able to recognize themselves in a
mirror; the lesser apes treat their own image as they would treat
unfamiliar conspecifics (members of the same species). They
discovered that human infants placed before a mirror reacted
differently to their reflections depending upon age. As early as one
month of age, infants will gaze at their reflections. At 5-8 months
of age, they will smile at and touch the mirror (mirror-directed
behavior). At 9-12 months of age, they will move rhythmically as
they watch their image also move (play with contingency). At 15-
18 months of age infants will act coy before their reflections. If
rouge is applied to their noses prior to their exposure to a mirror, a
few in this age group will touch their own noses (self-directed
behavior) rather than the noses in the mirror. No infants younger
than fifteen months exhibited this behavior; practically all infants 21-
24 months old did
(1979: 212-219).
Lewis and brooks-Gunn also exposed infants to videotapes of themselves, thus
eliminating the contingent relation between action and image. They discovered
that person-permanence is correlated with mirror-contingent self-recognition
and conditioned affective reactions, and that object-permanence,
occurring later, is correlated with self-permanence ans specific
emotional experience (1979: 222-228). The experimenters
concluded, on the basis of their data, that at birth, behavior is a
combination of random movements and innate reflexes, which
function as a means to engage the infant with its environment.
These innate reflexes gradually fade, replaced by cognitive
structures formed by infant-environment interaction. These
structures incerasingly take control of behavior. By approximately
three months of age, reflexes and cognitions exercise roughly
equal dominion, afther which cognitions progressivelt dominate
(1979: 241-245).
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