Conceptualization and Awareness in Piaget’s Theory and Its Relevance to the Child’s Conception of Language

Abstract

Two books by Piaget were recently published on the problem of “awareness,” each of them the result of a year’s work at the Centre d’Epistémologie Génétique: the first is called La prise de conscience (1974a)--literally translated “On becoming aware”--and the second is called Réussir et comprendre (1974b). Personally I think there are good reasons to be surprised at the choice of the topic “becoming aware.” On the one hand, this title could lead us to think that the work deals with the philosophical problem of “conciousness” for which introspection was supposed to provide the basic data. Would Piaget take introspection as a subject of experimental study? On the other hand, all Piaget’s work on cognitive development can be seen as the study of the child’s progress towards higher levels of conceptualization, and conceptualization at whatever level would seem to imply at least some degree of awareness. So why devote a number of experiments and a theoretical discussion to the specific problem of awareness?