Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id DAA15075 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 19 Feb 2000 03:10:33 GMT Message-Id: <200002190304.WAA15135@mail5.lig.bellsouth.net> From: "Joe E. Dees" <joedees@bellsouth.net> To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Date: Fri, 18 Feb 2000 21:12:52 -0600 Content-type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Subject: Genetic Epistemology In-reply-to: <200002182304.SAA21738@mail1.lig.bellsouth.net> X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v3.12b) Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> 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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