Commentary on "True Wishes"

Dickenson and Jones argue against the common theoretical and practical tendency to make categorical distinctions between the thought of adults and of children. The assumptions inherent in this tendency seem to be twofold. First, it is assumed that for all individuals, child-thought is transformed into adult-thought at a distinct stage. Second, it is assumed that this transformation takes the form of a general shift. Dickenson and Jones argue convincingly that neither of these claims can be taken for granted, citing significant empirical evidence against the Piagetian tendency towards general theories of development.

Although empirical evidence clearly weakens Piaget's argument, it is interesting to note that Piaget himself saw his stage theory not as an empirical claim but as a philosophical argument about the necessary conditions for knowledge:

. . . The construction characteristic of the epistemological subject, however rich it is in the kantian perspective, is still too poor, since it is completely given at the start. On the other hand, a dialectical construction, as seen in the history of science and in the experimental facts brought to light by studies on mental development . . . Enables us to attribute to the epistemological subject a much richer constructivity, although ending with the same characteristics of rational necessity and the structuring of experience, as those which Kant called for to guarantee his concept of the a priori.

(Piaget 1971, 57-58)

For Piaget it is a necessary condition of the possibility of knowledge that individuals pass through these discrete stages of development. For him, they are the logically necessary steps required to get from the particular to the general, and they are therefore the only way in which it is possible for individuals to come to have shared and objective knowledge. The important logical step which Piaget (I believe wrongly) takes in order to reach this conclusion is his advance from the claim that the possession of a concept Y is logically dependent upon the possessing of a concept X to the further claim that in development one must grasp concept X before concept Y. It seems clear that this need not be the case. For, as Hamlyn (1978) among others has argued, logical ordering does not imply developmental ordering in this way. On the contrary, it is well established that one may come to acquire concepts in a piecemeal fashion.

The implication of the failure of Piaget's argument is that there need not be any one way in which we come to learn, and there need not be general marked shifts in our understanding. This conclusion is important in the context of this paper, for it is here that the force of Dickenson and Jones's argument is felt. If there are in fact no logical or empirical grounds for the claim that there is a distinct dividing line between the competence of children and adults, an assessment of such competence can only be made on a case-by-case basis.

Individualism

The failure of Piaget's argument for the necessity of stages has another interesting and relevant implication. For, if we reject the notion of necessity, we reject also Piaget's premise that development is an individualistic project, and with it, the implication that we come to share an understanding with others because our development shares a logical form. This conclusion resonates with our intuitive sense that shared understandings with other people are tied not to the local structure of our thought but to our engagement with them in shared practices and ways of life.

To attempt to guarantee the shared form of human thought by means of a logical form is thus to radically misunderstand the nature of what it is to engage in human relationships and indeed what it is to be human at all. We come to share an understanding with others because human experience and development are not individual processes but are essentially intersubjective and negotiational. To see this aspect of human nature is—echoing to some extent Wittgenstein's "private language argument" (1974, n.151-202)—to recognize that the growth of understanding is characterized at all levels by a developmental negotiation of meaning between persons...