Table Of ContentInsights 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
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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-
