Piaget+(WK2)

(notes on article for week 2)
 * The Essential Piaget**

Piaget's early work was on //causality// and simply consisted of him observing and commenting. (p. 118)

A child becomes capable of working out causal links between his own actions and events in his environment. When that happens, he can attribute events either to something caused by him or not. How do children analyze the explanations for mechanical movement? //"Does the correct explanation of machines come before the correct explanation of natural movements, or is the reverse the case?//" This question in the text prompted me to try and find an answer that I would feel good backing up. When analyzing a new mechanism, I find that the result, or product, of that machine comes before my understanding of it's process.

"[children obtain] joy of being the cause of movement" (p. 119)

home faber - man the maker (p.119)

//"But the fact remains-not too evident in Piaget's writings-that not all the properties of the self are attributed to the universe but only certain ones that have been carefully selected through experimentation and deduction."// (p119) When I read this sentence I asked myself this, 'was he talking about astrology?' I'm asking in hopes of a clarification. Piaget uses the examples of bicycles as they are a relatively complex yet widespread machine, making it easy to compare children from different geographical locations. The experiment consists of asking a boy if they can explain the functioning of a bicycle and if they can draw one. Breaking down in 4 stages depending on the age of the subject: mechanism without the how, details, types of movement and finally a complete explanation. (p. 122 offers a great dialogue of how such a conversation would have gone).

Differences in performance are shown between subjects who can see the bicycle in front of them and those working from memory. They summarize that in the first stage, when the subject was working from memory that simply "anything is possible". An example of such was given when they asked the child //" if you don't turn the pedals, can the bicycle go?"// the child's response was: //"Yes you can do that"-Uphill as well? "Yes."// (p. 123) The presence of interview quotes gives this text immense value as a research paper.

"for, these parts are thought to be [auxiliaries] to, not links in the movement" - possibly b/c this suits the childs needs of play or transportation. (later on in the reading this is in relation to the motivation causality possibly or even moral causality) (p.123)

"[...] seek to define the relations of the mind to reality without any preconceived notions as to what is mind and what is reality" - seems unlikely if you theorized that having a thought already gives you a notion of what mind is, and if you also went as far as to say that //thought// derived from reality (environment) then, you being in the environment around you, creates thought and simultaneously sets up a background for what mind is.

In finishing this part: "//If we examine the intellectual development of the individual or of the whole of humanity, we shall find that the human spirit goes through a certain number of stages, ...//" (p. 128) "//The progrem of the relation between thought and things, once it has been narrowed down this way, becomes the problem of the relation of an organism to its environment."// (p. 129) I was slightly confused by the first paragraph on page 129, can someone help me out?

I can't seem to decipher top paragraph on page 130. What is going on here? Anyone?

Thought in adult is precious, more intimate in its distinctness than the external world. - "more internal and intimate than the body itself" (p. 131, full third para. down)

realism to objectivity: when child draws no distinction between self and external.

reciprocity: when child reflects viewpoint with that of people around them.

Objective knowledge only comes once you can recognize your Self or ones "I". (p. 131)

Progressive differentiation (p. 132) is when contrast accumulates between the external and internal world. This is a nurtured process brought on by society, so my question is then: is this right? Is it right to draw a distinction between the two? Not that I'm necessarily swayed either way; just mull it over.

Objects not alive anymore (lack in //animism//) so not there for man (lack in //dynamic participation//), and now the child no longer feels objects are willed (lack in //force).//

I cannot understand finalism and artificialism as much as I'd like. Maybe we discuss Piaget's steps if time allows.

On the question of reality, children move through 3 states simultaneously (realism/objectivity, realism/reciprocity & realism/relativity). The author seems to want it to be clear that they are talking about strictly a psychological stance not an epistemology. But he goes on to mention that it is not possible to completely separate these areas as they do overlap in various ways, and this point is argued profusely on (p.130)

Child intellegence first begins with perception of what s/he is feeling or seeing. Then, through experience of the outside world, perception changes into understanding of how the objects relate to him or herself, how they are realated to his/her environment, and (eventually) what the difference is between the two. (This is what I think I am understanding from the bottom of page 136).

Experience is important to growth of intelligence. "The process is both social and intellectual in character: in becoming concious of his "I," the child clears external reality of all subjective (? guessing this is what it says since it is cut off) elements, and thus attains objectivity; but it is, above all, social life that has forced the child to become concious of his "ego." (p.136)

Restatement of bottom of p. 136: child dumps egocentricism because of the reciprocity of others thoughts, and thus dumps his subjectivity, (animism, force, etc.) of objects in the external world. So. Do social factors create reality in the child, or does this phenomenon itself (perpetual as it is) determine social life?

Phenomenistic causality: any two or more things (maybe facts) that can be observed as one causing the other.

p. 138: the child advances by doing away with adherences, but also buys into limited preceptions of reality and this gets further from reality in consequence.

"Intellectual evolution requires that both mind and environment should make their contribution." (p. 138) In the earliest stages, the child sees everything as a living thing and as a part of him/her, or believes that it is there for his or her purposes. S/he is egocentric and focused on what the object can do for him or her. In the next stages, as the child observes more of the environment, s/he begins to accept the object as a part of that environment, and also begins to separate his or her inside world from that of the outside. However, at this middle stage the child still holds onto the animism of the object (Moon and Sun example: the moon lives in the sky, but the child still believes it follows him or her). In the last stages the child begins to see the object as a completely separate entity, a part of the environment that surrounds him. Through these stages, we can see that the child's own thinking and the influence of the outside environment both contribute to the intellectual growth of the child. "from the point of view of the action of the physical environment upon the child, we are faced with //aveontinual paradox://the child is both nearer to and farther from the world of objects than we are, and in evolving an adult mentality he both advances toward reality and recedes from it....intellectual evolution requires that both mind and environment should make their contribution; the mind adapts itself to the world, and transforms it in such a way that the world can adapt itself to the mind...." (p138)

The 17 different types of Causal Relations in child thought, (starting on P.138)

First Stage in the Development of Child Psychology: Second Stage: Third Stage:
> This type of relation made me think of the exercise we did in class when we were asked “How do babies know how to build arms and legs? What do you guys think? Am I completely off, or does that make some sense, let me know.
 * 1) __**Psychological causality:**__ "Which is both causal and final ; let us call it the motivation type. For example, God or men send us dreams because we have done things that we ought not to have done. This type is, no doubt, the most primitive, but it is also the one that survives the longest. Its scope is reduced, however, as mental development proceeds, since things in general cease to be thought of as conscious or as specially made by men. But during the primitive stages the motivating relation is omnipresent. Elsewhere we have designated as pre-causality this tendency to take a psychological motive as the true cause of everything : there are two Saleve mountains, because there must be one for grown- ups and one for children, and so on." (p. 138)
 * 2) **__Pure finalsm:__** "This type overlaps with the preceding one to a certain extent, but it gradually separates itself from it. When the child says that the river flows so as to go into the lake, the river is not necessarily endowed with consciousness, nor the makers of things with a motive. There is simply finality, without either the origins or the consequences of this finalism being noticed by the child. It is much the same when we say, in accordance with ordinary common-sense, that ducks have webbed feet so as to swim better. Implicitly, of course, there is present some idea of a divine plan, or of conscious and voluntary effort on the part of the duck. But these links with psychological causality are not perceived or made explicit, which shows that finalism is to be distinguished from motivation." (p. 139)
 * 3) **__Phenomenistic causality:__ "**Two facts given together in perception, and such that no relation subsists between them except that of contiguity in time and space, are regarded as being connected by a relation of causality. A fire lit under an engine or alongside of it is regarded as the cause of movement, long before the child has attempted to find a single intermediary between this fire and the wheels of the engine. A child will say that one pebble sinks to the bottom of the water because it is white, that another pebble is light because it is black, that the moon remains suspended in the sky because it is yellow and bright, and so on. Anything may produce anything." (p. 139-140)
 * 4) **__Participation:__** "This type is more frequent than would at first appear to be the case, but it disappears after the age of 5-6. Its principle is the following: two things between which there subsist relations either of resemblance or of general affinity, are conceived as having something in common which enables them to act upon one another at a distance, or more precisely, to be regarded one as a source of emanations, the other as the emanation of the first. Thus air or shadows in a room emanate from the air and shadows out of doors. Thus also dreams, which are sent to us by birds " who like the wind " (C.W., Chap. Ill, 2)." (p. 140)
 * 5) __**Magical causality:**__ "The subject regards his gestures, his thoughts, or the objects he handles, as charged with efficacy, thanks to the very participations which he establishes between those gestures, etc., and the things around him. Thus a certain word acts upon a certain thing ; a certain gesture will protect one from a certain danger ; a certain white pebble will bring about the growth of water-lilies, and so on." (p.140)
 * 6) __**Moral causality:**__ "The child explains the existence of a given movement or of a given feature by its necessity, but this necessity is purely moral : the clouds " must " advance in order to make night when men go to bed in order to sleep ; boats " have to " float, otherwise they would be of no use, etc. Closely akin to psychological causality or finalism, but with an added element of necessity, moral causality is also related to that form of participation which we have called dynamic : external objects have intentions which participate with ours, and in this way our desires force them to obey us in accordance with purely moral or psychical laws." (p.140)
 * 7) __**Artificialist causality:**__ "Psychological causality or pre-causality is at the start neither purely moral nor purely physical. A given event is explained straight away by the intention or motive at the back of it, but the child does not ask himself how this intention has worked itself out in action. Since all nature both matter and consciousness is nothing but life, the problem does not arise. As soon as the two terms come to be differentiated, artificialist causality appears, at the same time as moral causality and in the nature of its complement : the event or object to be explained is then conceived as the object of human creative activity. This shows the family resemblance to the preceding types which are all capable of growing into artificialism or of finding themselves completed, thanks to this new type of relation." (p. 140)
 * 8) __**Animistic causality:**__ "The existence of a character or form is explained by an internal biological tendency that is both alive and conscious. The sun is what it is because, after having been made by men, it grows. Mountains have grown, etc. Clouds and the heavenly bodies move along because they are alive. This is the complement of artificial causality ; external motors act on things only if the latter possess an internal motor capable of carrying out the directions and commands received from without." (p. 140-141)
 * 9) __**Dynamic causality:**__ "Once animism proper has been eliminated, there still remain in objects forces that are capable of explaining their activity and their movements. Thus, primitively, force is confused with life itself, but dynamism outlives animism, just as finalism outlives pre-causality. Throughout this book we have had occasion to point to the very general character of childish dynamism." (p. 141)
 * 10) __**Reaction of the surrounding medium:**__ "For all the preceding forms appeal either to motives or to intentions, either to occult emanations or to mystical manufactures. But reaction of the surrounding medium implies, and, for the first time, the need for defining the " how " of phenomenon, i.e. the need for continuity and contact. At first reaction of the surrounding medium still goes hand in hand with animistic dynamism. Only it completes this dynamism with a more exact mechanism. Thus the clouds are regarded as setting themselves in motion, but once this movement is started, the clouds are driven along by the air which they produce by their flight. Later on, reaction of the surrounding medium will serve to explain purely mechanical movements. Thus projectiles which are supposed to be devoid of any spontaneous movement are pushed along by the air which they make in moving. The prime motor is thus the hand that throws the projectile, and not an internal force, as in the case of the clouds. We have seen what universal use children make of explanation by reaction of the surrounding medium. The movement of clouds, of the heavenly bodies, of water, of air, of projectiles, of bicycles, of aeroplanes, of boats, of tops, the effects of centrifugal force all these are reduced to a schema which up till now was thought to be peculiar to Greek and medieval physics." (p. 141)
 * 11) __**Mechanical causality:**__ "The wind pushes the clouds, the pedals make the bicycle go, etc. This form of causality appears between the years of 7 and 8. It is always the result of eliminating dynamism. The child who always begins by attributing these movements to the collaboration of two forces, one internal (the object's own force) and the other external, gradually comes to look upon the internal motor as unnecessary. At this point explanation becomes mechanical. Very often the schema of reaction of the surrounding medium serves as a transitional stage between the dynamic character of the early stages and the mechanical character of the later explanations which the child may offer of a given phenomenon." (p. 141)
 * 12) **__Causality by generation: __** “The explanation of movement naturally admits much more easily of being reduced to the mechanical type than the explanation of how bodies are actually produced. The stage when children bring their ideas of movement in general under the heading of mechanism, they still look to artificialism and animism to explain the origin of things”. p.141
 * 1) **__Substantial identification :__** "bodies that are born from each other cease to be endowed with the power of growth as it exists in living beings." p.142
 * 2) __**Condensation and rarefaction:**__ "For it is not enough for the child to say that the sun has been made by clouds that have rolled themselves up into a ball, or that a stone is formed of earth and sand. The qualitative differences have to be explained, which separate bodies of similar origin. The child then makes the following perfectly natural hypothesis. That the qualities of the sun result from the fact that the clouds have been " well packed" (serres). That the hardness of the stone comes from the fact that the earth is " close " (serree). Thus the matter that makes up bodies is more or less condensed or rarefied. Naturally, the child does not seek, as did the early pre-Socratic thinkers, to reduce all qualitative differences to differences of condensation. Nevertheless, between the ages of 9 and 10, we can see a very general attempt at explanation by condensation. This shows with particular clearness in the evolution of the idea of weight. According to the very young children, bodies are heavy in proportion to their size, and the child has no notion of differences in specific density. The older ones, on the contrary, say that the water is light because it is " thin ", or " liquid ", whereas wood and stone are heavy because they are " big ", " thick ", " full ", and so on. In short, putting aside mistakes in the evolution of weight, water is a rarefied matter, whereas wood and stone are condensed matters." (p. 142-143)
 * 3) **__Atomistic composition:__** "From the moment that bodies are regarded as the result of the condensation or rarefaction of original substances, it follows inevitably that sooner or later they will be conceived of as made up of particles tightly or loosely packed together. This is the conclusion which the child comes to with regard to stones : the stone is made of little stones, which are made of grains of earth, etc." (p. 143)
 * 4) **__Spatial explanation:__** "Thus the explanation of the cone-shaped shadow appeals, in the later stages, to principles of perspective. Similarly, the explanation of the rise in the water-level due to the immersion of solid bodies appeals, after the age of 9-10, to the volume of the immersed body. This is rather an advanced form of explanation and consequently only occasionally to be found in children." (p. 143)
 * 5) **__Logical deduction:__** "A good example of this was supplied by the experiment of the communicating vessels : the level of the water is the same in both branches, so some of the children told us, because the water can go equally well in one or both directions, and this is what explains the final equilibrium. This is explanation by the principle of sufficient reason. All mechanical explanations, spatial, atomistic, etc., appeal sooner or later to the principle of deduction, and this type of explanation is therefore one of increasing frequency after the age of 10~11. For example, from the laws which he has observed in connection with the floating of boats, the rise in the water level, the child gradually draws explanations which imply concepts, such as density, specific weight, and so on. These concepts are pure relations ; they are chosen in view of deductions to be made, and are not imposed by facts." (p. 143)

Having distinguished these seventeen types, we can now lay down three main periods in the development of child causality. During the first, all the explanations given are psychological, phenomenistic, finalistic, and magical (types I-VI). During the second stage, the explanations are artificialist, animistic, and dynamic (types VII-IX), and the magical forms (III and IV) tend to diminish. Finally, during a third period, the preceding forms of explanation disappear progressively and give place to the more rational forms (X to XVII). Thus the first two periods are characterized by what we have called precausality (in the widest sense of the word), i.e., by the confusion of relations of a psychological or biological type in general with relations of a mechanical type, and true causality does not appear till about the age of 7-8 (third period).

__**Vocabulary Terms**__ (feel free to define and add to the list) //**Dynamism:**// "A theory that all phenomena (as matter or motion) can be explained as manifestations of force." (Websters dictionary) //**Artificialism:**// "A view in which it is believed that all objects and events in the world have been manufactured to serve people." (wadsworth.com, student resource glossary) //**Animism:**// endowing things with consciousness and life (p133) Empirical groping: making deductions independently of any sort of deduction. //"we do so because we are perpetually on the lookout for some possible deduction."// (p140) //**Moral causality:** "the existence of a given movement or of a given// //feature by its necessity"// it does what it does because it has to, otherwise it would have no purpose (p140) //**Magical causality:**// "The subject regards his gestures, his thoughts, or the objects he handles, as charged with efficacy, thanks to the very participations which he establishes between those gestures, etc., and the things around him." (telecommunications.com, The Child's Conception of Physical Causality:Summary and Conclusion) //**Phenomenistic causality:**// "Two facts given together in perception, and such that no relation subsists between them except that of contiguity in time and space, are regarded as being connected by a relation of causality." (telecommunications.com, The Child's Conception of Physical Causality:Summary and Conclusion) //**Finalism**// – doctrine that final causes determine the course of all events.

Last paragraph of text, p. 153: "Having established the fact" is the type of statement that takes a little validity away from Piaget's argument. Yes, we can see his reasoning, and yes we can follow every step if vigilant, and possibly if we had a better copy of the text, but that isn't to say it's 'fact'. What is fact? Who decides 'fact'? Also, in stating so frequently that the research has proven fact, it reminds me of 'someone is protesting too much so'. Not to mention that no research can deduce fact, for 'correlation is not causation'.

__**Related Links**__ [|The Child's Conception of Physical Causality: Summary and Conclusion]