Cognitive Science and Genetic Epistemology: A Case Study of Understanding

200 Pages·1990·4.014 MB·English

by  David Leiser, Christiane Gillièron (auth.)

COGNITIVE SCIENCE
AND GENETIC
EPISTEMOLOGY
A Case Study of Understanding
PATH IN PSYCHOLOGY
Published in Cooperation with Publications for the
Advancement of Theory and History in Psychology (PATH)
Series Editors:
David Bakan, York University
John Broughton, TetI&hers College, Columbia University
Robert Rieber, John Jay College, CUNY, and Columbia University
Howard Gruber, University of Geneva·
COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGY: A Case
Study of Understanding
David Leiser and Christiane Gillieron
A CRITICAL PSYCHOLOGY: Interpretation of the Personal World
Edmund V. Sullivan
CRITICAL THEORIES OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT
Edited by John M. Broughton
DEVELOPMENTAL APPROACHES TO THE SELF
Edited by Benjamin Lee and Gil G. Noam
FRANTZ FANON AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF OPPRESSION
Hussein Abdilahi Bulhan
HUMANISTIC PSYCHOLOGY: Concepts and Criticisms
Edited by Joseph R. Royce and Leendert P. Mos
PSYCHOSoctAL THEORIES OF THE SELF
Edited by Benjamin Lee
THEORETICAL PSYCHOLOGY: The Meeting of East and West
A. C. Paranjpe
WILHELM WUNDT AND THE MAKING OF A SCIENTIFIC
PSYCHOLOGY
Edited by R. W. Rieber
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
AND GENETIC
EPISTEMOLOGY
A Case Study of Understanding
DAVID LEISER
Ben-Gurian University of the Negev
Beer-5heva, Israel
AND
CHRISTIANE GILLIE RON
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzer/and
PLENUM PRESS • NEW YORK AND LONDON
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Leiser, David.
Cognitive science and genetic epistemology: a case study of understanding / David
Leiser and Christiane Gillieron.
p. cm.-(PAT H in psychology)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Seriation (Psychology) 2. Genetic epistemology. 3. Cognitive science. I. Gillieron,
Christiane. II. Title. III. Series.
BF445.L45 1989 89·22970
153.4-dc20 CIP
ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-5651-6 e-ISBN-13: 978-1-4684-5649-3
001: 10.1007/978-1-4684-5649-3
© 1990 Plenum Press, New York
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1s t edition 1990
A Division of Plenum Publishing Corporation
233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y. 10013
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming,
recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the Publisher
FOREWORD
Some 10 years ago, Leo Apostel presented an analysis of developments
taking place in genetic epistemology and artificial intelligence, and re
marked that the two disciplines appeared to be converging, without one
dominating or assimilating the other. In his view, significant formal and
experimental progress would be required in the post-Piagetian era: ge
netic epistemology would need to take into account developments in
artificial intelligence, while remaining an independent discipline at the
frontiers of biology, logic, and psychology.
The work of David Leiser and Christiane Gillieron, both psychol
ogists with a Genevan training who are concerned by the procedural
aspects of intelligence, is an important contribution. Their studies,
which open up new theoretical perspectives, are carried out with metic
ulous attention to research methodology. Going beyond merely ad
dressing criticisms about the status of Piagetian operational structures,
their work will help fill the gap between genetic epistemology and cog
nitive science.
The authors' main purpose is to analyze the relations between pro
cedures and structures via a series of carefully constructed seriation
experiments. The study of these relations not only occupies an impor
tant place in the current concerns of Piaget-inspired psychology, but it
also allows an assessment of the contributions of studies in artificial
intelligence to genetic epistemology, as well as a view of their limita
tions. As computational treatments deal in symbols, they refer predomi
nantly to mental representations and eliminate almost all reference to
constructions through operations. Genetic epistemology, by contrast,
emphasizes systems of actions and operations that lead to logical co
herence and the search for reasons. The authors aim to identify levels of
descriptions that ensure the transition between cognitive representa
tions and operations. Specifically, they show how only the higher levels
v
vi FOREWORD
of abstractions (often neglected by certain cognitive scientists) can ac
count for the subject's understanding.
There are various ways, not all operative, to carry out a task suc
cessfully and to arrive at the same result. To be sure, a correct solution
does not necessarily imply an understanding of the procedure adopted;
but can one countenance fundamental progress in knowledge without a
construction tending toward that coherence which founds categories
and nonns? Even imperfect knowledge that follows deviant paths has
this tendency toward coherence. To ignore this tendency is to neglect
that which lies at the heart of all cognitive behavior: the phenomenon of
understanding.
The way Leiser and Gillieron construe the problem they treat is in
fundamental agreement with my own views. In a paper on the relations
between procedures and structures (Inhelder and Piaget, 1979), several
differences between procedures and structures were pointed out: struc
tures are basically atemporal, whereas procedures necessarily unfold
temporally; similarly, structures are characterized by their coherence
while procedures show great variety and specificity. Furthennore, I
agree with G. Cellerier, that the most general property of intelligence is
to be found in the construction of ad hoc models which, progressively,
become operatory. Along similar theoretical lines, Leiser and Gillieron
explore the passage from temporality to atemporality and the construc
tion of normative structures. They raise the fundamental problem of
how a new procedure is invented, and how a successful procedural
invention can lead to an understanding that goes beyond its specificity.
A related, also fundamental problem is that of the so-called tem
poral decalage. Many psychologists have wondered why certain struc
tures fail to be manifested in all appropriate contexts. Jean Piaget and
myself studied the structuring of certain aspects of reality (such as quan
tity and mass) by the subject. We did so by analyzing the logic of his
behavior. A procedural approach to the decalages we noted can throw
new light on this question. Is it possible to solve a seriation problem
without applying the supposedly necessary operations? Leiser and
Gillieron present early successes in seriation that rely on various pro
cedures (e.g., spatial procedures) and that do not involve the operations
we considered prototypical; in these cases, success on the task does not
imply understanding of the procedure.
As I see it, the originality of the research presented in this volume
lies in that the authors study the general paradigm of seriation in all of
its variations. Working with adults at the level of mental representa
tions, without allowing the subjects to manipulate, and with children
who act on objects that vary along different dimensions (e.g., length,
FOREWORD vii
weight), they analyze in detail the temporal unfolding of certain pro
cedures as well as the part played by spatial structures, and do so with
exceedingly ingenious and subtle methods. The "spatial core of organi
zation," emphasized by Piaget and myself in different contexts as a
source for other comparable or isomorphic organizations (such as time
and size) is brought into prominence for seriation problems. The au
thors also clarify the relations between anticipatory schemes which typ
ically illustrate top-down processes, and the empirical discovery of pro
cedures which are bottom-up processes.
In our work of the 1940s and 1950s, Piaget and I were much con
cerned with transitivity and reversibility as characteristic manifestations
of operativity. Leiser and Gillieron argue that these characteristics of
operativity are often not relevant for the invention of specific pro
cedures. Indeed, identical behavior can appear at different levels of
operativity, and the same result can be obtained by dissimilar pro
cedures. As pointed out by the authors, all thought tends toward co
herence which only overall, operative structure can guarantee. In other
terms, inventing a procedure is very different from understanding it.
Knowing why procedures work requires a system of operations.
Leiser and Gillieron introduce their readers to a set of problems I
share; their clearly worked-out conceptual framework and methodology
throw light on the relation between general cognitive competence and
specific knowledge on how to solve a problem, studied in real time and
in the course of development. In order to bridge the gaps between
genetic psychology and epistemology on the one hand, cognitive sci
ence on the other hand, it is to be hoped that further research will be
inspired by the work reported in this volume.
BARBEL INHELDER
University of Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland
PREFACE
This book is concerned with the connection between procedures and
structures, the former emphasized by cognitive scientists of the Ameri
can persuasion, and the latter honored by older cognitivists in the vein
of genetic epistemology. In the chapters that follow, we strive to show,
by a case study, that the two approaches are not antagonistic but com
plement each other.
Piaget's genetic epistemology is an attempt to explicate knowledge
by scrutinizing its causal genesis. Starting from his view that norms
have an objective reality since they appear as such to human subjects,
who assuredly exist, Pia get believed that describing the construction of
normative systems (especially logic) was a way to understand episteme.
Knowledge links mathematics and reality. This is particularly true of
scientific knowledge: modeling the world is mathematizing it. A general
epistemology directed toward the whole enterprise of knowledge must
therefore consider both the deductive and the empirical sciences in their
mutual interdependence.
To some mathematicians or logicians, the mere claim that they are
interdependent could seem blasphemous: formal disciplines are not
concerned with reality. The ghost of psychologism is still frightening.
For genetic epistemology, however, the link between reality and logico
mathematical beings is the main problem to be solved, and a genetic and
naturalistic approach plays a central role in its solution (Gillieron, 1987).
Indeed, looking at the development of cognition in the child is Piaget's
clever trick to answer the question of both the "logic" of the real and the
reality of logic (Piaget, 1972/1947).
To some psychologists, too, such concerns will seem foreign and
inopportune. Yet the time has come to understand that Piaget was not a
child psychologist, and that his "cognitive structures" were not aimed at
modeling the child's solutions to ordinary tasks. These tasks were care
fully calibrated to answer specific questions such as the priority of logical
ix
x PREFACE
thinking over empirical theorization. In other words, the "model" was
nested in the task, and a behavioral approach to the Genevan experi
ments would simply miss the mark. A bottom-up look at the publicly
observable data, going from the description of some "performance" to
an abstract model of "competence," is far opposite the genetic way.
Genetic psychology is adult-centered, indeed, scientist-centered. It
starts from the end, the final stage, and reconstructs its construction.
Even so, and each in its own way, cognitive science and genetic
psychology are concerned with tasks and the ways of the subject who
faces them. This book is a case study of one such task-seriation.
Speaking of one task is already taking a stand, for we wish to refer
to a class of experimental tasks. But this illustrates perfectly a problem
that pervades the problem-solving literature and demonstrates what
Piaget meant by mathematization. In reality, no two things are ever the
same; they are only similar. Now, similarity means assimilation, i.e.,
active work of a subject who identifies, recognizes, and calculates. In
structions such as "Put the balls in order according to their weight" and
"Put the sticks in order according to their length" are the same for
somebody who knows what is changed and what is conserved. The
gerund form in "mutatis mutandis" hides a norm, the norm the experi
menter shares with the subject, if they understand each other. (It is
worth noting that in genetic psychology mutual understanding is a cen
tral clue to the communalities of norms.)
When are two tasks variants of a single problem, or when are they
instances of two different problems? Doubtlessly, when they have the
same structure. But the same structure for whom, the subject or the
experimenter?
This question does not usually bother one who sets up an experi
ment by "covering up" a structure; he feels he knows where he stands
and where his tasks originated. To somebody who is unclear about the
psychological status of structures of understanding, the situation is
more confused. One occasional way out is to look at solutions rather
than at problems, and define isomorphism by the mapping of the steps
of two procedures. The term "isomorphism" then loses its original
meaning.
In any event, if an experimenter presents two tasks with the hope
that the subject will apply the "same" solution to both, this means that
he himself is able to do so, i.e., they are the same for him. But the
experimenter is always one step ahead, for he knows that the "prob
lems" he formulates have a solution. For the subject, who is ignorant of
the solution, do the two problems also have the same structure? And the
same holds in the more interesting case of the experimenter-less subject,
who stands directly before nature, and, in particular, of the scientist.
PREFACE xi
One may point to the difference between the structures of the sub
ject and those of the observer. Of course, this does not answer the
question of why a form applies to a particular content, because the very
fact that the experimenter already has a solution implies that the subject
could, in principle, find it too (after all, both are human beings). But
when there is no experimenter and the subject consistently fails, the
fault lies not with him but with reality, which resists his efforts. Why is it
that reality sometimes accepts, sometimes resists, mathematization?
This question is at the core of the discussion of "horizontal decalages."
When designing two problem isomorphs, experimenters, who
often manage to disguise a structure with appropriately confusing in
structions, may obscure their similarity. The first part of the book will
show us treading this way. Now, horizontal decalages are not the result
of instructions, but of reality. No wonder it is such a vexing topic; it is
also a puzzle to the epistemologist, not just to a subject who complies
with the experimenter by finding an already existing solution. This is
why we do not claim to provide a general answer to the question of
decalages, although the second part of the book might be read with this
concern in mind.
We want to relate specific solutions to a more general cognitive
organization and analyze the understanding of the task at four different
levels. These are hierarchically ordered and go from the most literal
reading of the instructions (which needs assimilation anyway), from the
most procedural to the most abstract, context-free, atemporal structural
knowledge. We still believe in an evolutionary approach and address
the question of the emergence of such a general organization.
The book is structured in two parts, which represent two argu
ments. On the one hand, adults are guided by operational structures.
The first part addresses this question, and discusses the first two levels
at length. On the other hand, children who are not yet "good" mathe
maticians in the adult sense still are guided by some supraprocedural
conception. When the child's rationality differs from the experimenter's,
she may end with a "bad" yet coherent and anticipatory procedure. The
developmental pattern of solutions, and the way they integrate logical,
operatory properties such as transitivity or reversibility (or fail to do so),
is treated in Part II. As expected, a general discussion brings the things
together and opens the field to further investigation.
Most of the data presented here were gathered during the years
1972-1976. We feel, however, that they are still pertinent to the current
debate, which in turn has challenged our views and nourished our dis
cussions. We thank the Archives de Psychologie and its publisher, Mede
cine et Hygiene, for permission to use the already published part of our
material.