Insights and illusions of philosophy PDF
Preview Insights and illusions of philosophy
Insights and Illusions of Philosophy by Jean Piaget Translated from the French by Wolfe Mays The World Publishing Company New York and Cleveland Printed in the United States of America FIRST AMERICAN EDITION Published by The World Publishing Company—Second printing, 1972 Published simultaneously in Canada by Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd. Copyright © 1965 by Presses Universitaires de France English translation copyright © 1971 by The World Publishing Company All rights reserved Library of Congress catalog card number: 74-120735 Printed in the United States of America Contents Translator’s Introduction vii Introduction xiii Chapter One An account of and an analysis of a disenchantment 3 Chapter Two Science and philosophy 39 Chapter Three The false ideal of a suprascientific knowledge 78 Additional note on ontology and the “inadequacies” of science 117 VJ* Contents Chapter Four The ambitions of a philosophical psychology 122 Chapter Five Philosophers and problems of fact l6 5 Conclusion 209 Postscript to the Second Edition 215 Translator’s Introduction In this valuable book Piaget examines his own philosophical position and compares it with present-day continental philo sophical thought. Among other things, he gives the reader a most interesting insight into his own intellectual development and an account of the way in which he finally arrived at his épistémologie génétique. Piaget argues that recent continental philosophy has turned away from the empirical world and con centrated on introspective description. He contrasts this with the attitude of most of the great philosophers of the past, who had a decided interest in scientific questions, which affected their mode of thinking. He points out that although philosophy has, among other things, provided a matrix for the development of such sciences as logic, psychology and sociology, it can only give us a “wisdom” and not knowledge in the real sense of the word as we come across it in mathematics and science. In this connection Piaget examines the attempt of Husserl and others to introduce a mode of knowledge specific to phi losophy, and of a higher order logically than that of science. The attempt to look for it in an elementary act of consciousness (i.e. the intentional act), which gives us knowledge of “essences,” suffers from the drawback that such acts seem to be a feature of sophisticated adult consciousness. For Piaget, however, adult intellectual activities are conditioned by earlier forms of be havior. He argues that the Achilles heel of philosophers like •vu viii • Translator’s Introduction Bergson and Husserl, who believe in intuition as an immediate source of knowledge, lies precisely in their neglect of the his torical and genetic viewpoints. Piaget is also concerned with attempts of Maine de Biran, Bergson, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty to construct a philosophical psychology as opposed to a scientific empirical psychology. He believes that the difference between philosophical psychology and scientific psychology lies neither in the fact that the former concerns itself with “essences” (Husserl), with “irrationality” (Sartre), nor in its use of introspection. He sees the difference as being one rather of method: philosophical psychology neglects objective verification and grounds itself in subjectivity, although claiming to arrive at objective knowledge through intuition. How far, one may ask, if at all, do Piaget’s criticisms of French philosophy and philosophers apply to the Anglo-Saxon philo sophical scene? The empirical tradition of British philosophy would, it might be thought, make British philosophers at least sympathetic with Piaget’s views, especially as they are somewhat critical of phenomenology and existentialism. Curiously enough, as far as methodology is concerned, the school of conceptual (or linguistic) analysis, which has a substantial following among American philosophers, has certain affinities with that of phe nomenology. One finds an acceptance of the view that empirical questions are irrelevant to philosophical ones, and that philo sophical discussions of conceptual thinking are concerned with questions of validity and not of origin. Then genetic (historical) dimension is therefore excluded because, as it is sometimes said, it is concerned with the process of discovery and not of justifi cation. The philosopher is interested only in the latter. One of the points Piaget makes in this book is that philoso phers in France represent a social élite, and one which has strongly influenced the pattern of French education. It is inter esting to note here that some critics of the Oxford school of linguistic philosophy have pointed out that it, too, is the intel lectual expression of an élite. However, its impact on British education is significantly more limited than is the case with phi- Translator’s Introduction •ix losophy in France. Similarly, Piaget’s observations on the uni versity training of French philosophers—that it is divorced from studies of a scientific nature—could equally well apply to the training of many British philosophers. But unlike their French counterparts, they would not be concerned with the arduous study of philosophical texts, but rather with the painstaking study of linguistic usage. Further, some British philosophers also regard philosophical psychology as a legitimate enterprise distinct from empirical psy chology, although they would treat the former in a much more linguistic manner. On this point of view, when the psychologist studies such topics as learning, motivation, perception, etc., he is solely concerned with particular causal or genetic factors. The philosopher’s task, on the other hand, is to examine the gram mar or logic of the language in which our psychological concepts are expressed. We are told that a subject like physics or psychol ogy has a logical grammar that covers the meaningful use of the terms of the subject, which is not to be determined by empirical investigation. To engage in a philosophical inquiry is then some thing like doing mathematics or logic. One may agree that in assessing the correctness of a piece of logical or mathematical reasoning, validity is our sole concern, and that questions of psychological fact—how we actually think —are irrelevant. On the other hand, when we deal with such questions as the nature of learning or concept formation, a refer ence to psychological facts becomes necessary, as we cannot know what they are by reflection alone. The philosopher’s usual counter to this is to say that he is concerned with the logic of learning, thought, etc, and not its psychology. In practice this often comes to discussing the meaning psychological terms have in ordinary discourse, and examining the different ways they are used. As a result it is assumed that philosophers can talk about the intended meanings, habits, capacities, skills, etc., of human be ings without the need to elucidate such questions by reference to psychological research. Such an approach may have had some X* Translator’s Introduction credence when introspection was the only method used for de scribing and analyzing psychological phenomena. But have we any grounds today for assuming that our unaided personal obser vations are incorrigible, as Descartes thought in the case of the Cogito, even if they are helped out by an analysis of the language in which they are expressed? It is true that in recent years some philosophers have appealed to behavioral skills rather than in trospection in discussing psychological data. However, most of these accounts are highly impressionistic, and are not subject to experimental control or verification. For example, in discussing intellectual skills, there is little or no reference to empirical studies on concept formation. Piaget’s experiments on concept formation have been criti cized by some linguistic philosophers on the grounds that they do not show that there is anything wrong with the child’s logic, but merely that the child does not know how to use language properly. His lack of understanding of conservation—that ob jects retain their identity when, for example, their shape is de formed—is due to this and not to a failure to grasp the logical principle of identity. But whether the child can actually under stand this concept cannot be decided simply by a reference to normal adult usage. We may have to experiment in order to see in which situations the child can, and in which he cannot, use this concept. For example, when first dealing with a collection of objects the young child cannot distinguish its spatial aspect from its numerical one, so that a change in its shape may lead him to believe that there has been a change in the number of objects. This is not simply a question of failing to understand the use of language. The child still only possesses a rudimentary concept of number, of which invariance is not yet an essential property. Piaget’s work shows that our concepts of logic, space, time, number, quantity, etc., are not given readymade as Kant thought, but undergo a process of development. Philosophers have criticized the empiricists Locke and Mill on the ground that they base their doctrine of concept forma tion on a muddled notion of abstraction. It is argued that al-
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