Education :Jean Piaget Society : For the study of knowledge and development.

Photo: Jean Piaget

THE GENETIC EPISTEMOLOGYST by Terrance Brown
Among the many conceits of modern thought is that philosophy, tainted as it is by subjective evaluation, is a shaky guide for human affairs. People, it is argued, are better off if they base their conduct either on know-how with its pragmatic criterion of truth or on science with its universal criterion of rational necessity. The simple fact is, however, that human intelligence is fundamentally philosophical. Subjective values were the selective principle that made the first forms of intelligence possible and, in almost every way that counts, they remain the most powerful form of intellectual selection. The problem comes when philosophical and scientific solutions are conflated, and ideas that owe their existence to subjective evaluation are put forward as scientific truths. A dramatic current example has arisen from the incestuous dealings of a motley group: neuroscience, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, psychology, neurology, psychiatry, the pharmaceutical industry, government, and the popular press. In the mythology of this consortium and, unfortunately, in the practices stemming from that mythology, it is often assumed that mind can be discovered by studying brain. Pondering this strange and dangerous development leads ineluctably to the question of reductionism in science, a topic on which Piaget shed much light with his conception of the "circle of the sciences."