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diff --git a/books/psicologia/psychology-of-intelligence.mdwn b/books/psicologia/psychology-of-intelligence.mdwn index ff9bfb1..6831b08 100644 --- a/books/psicologia/psychology-of-intelligence.mdwn +++ b/books/psicologia/psychology-of-intelligence.mdwn @@ -4,6 +4,10 @@ * Publisher: Routledge Classics. * Year: 1950. +## References + +* [Piaget's theory of cognitive development - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piaget's_theory_of_cognitive_development). + ## Overview This overview is a mixed of both ideas from the book altogether with other @@ -33,6 +37,90 @@ not composed of intelligence alone. Other instances exist that might put the whole apparatus on restricted modes of operation, such when in a neurosis which is a state of constant looping in a given theme. +## Misc + +* Perception (imediate contact with the world) (127). + +* Habit: beyond short and rapidly automatised connections between per- + ceptions and responses (habit) (127). + +## Intelligence and equilibrium + + Then, if intelligence is thus conceived as the form of equilibrium towards + which all cognitive processes tend, there arises the problem of its relations + with perception (Chap. 3), and with habit (Chap. 4). + + -- Preface + + Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an + act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a + re-adaptation. The individual acts only if he experiences a need, i.e., if the + equilibrium between the environment and the organism is momentarily upset, and + action tends to re-establish the equilibrium, i.e., to re-adapt the organ- ism + (Claparède). A response is thus a particular case of inter- action between the + external world and the subject, but unlike physiological interactions, which + are of a material nature and involve an internal change in the bodies which are + present, the responses studied by psychology are of a functional nature and are + achieved at greater and greater distances in space (percep- tion, etc.) and in + time (memory, etc.) besides following more and more complex paths (reversals, + detours, etc.). Behaviour, thus conceived in terms of functional interaction, + presupposes two essential and closely interdependent aspects: an affective + aspect and a cognitive aspect. + + -- 5 + + Furthermore, intelligence itself does not consist of an isolated and sharply + differentiated class of cognitive processes. It is not, properly speaking, one + form of structuring among others; it is the form of equilibrium towards which + all the structures arising out of perception, habit and elementary + sensori-motor mechan- isms tend. It must be understood that if intelligence is + not a faculty this denial involves a radical functional continuity between the + higher forms of thought and the whole mass of lower types of cognitive and + motor adaptation; so intelligence can only be the form of equilibrium towards + which these tend. + + This does not mean, of course, that a judgment consists of a co- ordination of + perceptual structures, or that perceiving means unconscious inference (although + both these theories have been held), for functional continuity in no way + excludes diversity or even heterogeneity among structures. Every structure is + to be thought of as a particular form of equilibrium, more or less stable + within its restricted field and losing its stability on reach- ing the limits of + the field. But these structures, forming different levels, are to be regarded as + succeeding one another according to a law of development, such that each one + brings about a more inclusive and stable equilibrium for the processes that + emerge from the preceding level. Intelligence is thus only a generic term to + indicate the superior forms of organization or equilibrium of cognitive + structurings. + + -- 7 + + In general, we may thus conclude that there is an essential unity between the + sensori-motor processes that engender per- ceptual activity, the formation of + habits, and pre-verbal or pre- representative intelligence itself. The latter + does not therefore arise as a new power, superimposed all of a sudden on com- + pletely prepared previous mechanisms, but is only the expres- sion of these + same mechanisms when they go beyond present and immediate contact with the + world (perception), as well as beyond short and rapidly automatised connections + between per- ceptions and responses (habit), and operate at progressively + greater distances and by more complex routes, in the direction of mobility and + reversibility. Early intelligence, therefore, is simply the form of mobile + equilibrium towards which the mechanisms adapted to perception and habit tend; + but the latter attain this only by leaving their respective fields of + application. Moreover, intelligence, from this first sensori-motor stage + onwards, has already succeeded in constructing, in the special case of space, + the equilibrated structure that we call the group of displacements—in an + entirely empirical or practical form, it is true, and of course remaining on + the very restricted plane of immediate space. But it goes without saying that + this organiza- tion, circumscribed as it is by the limitations of action, still + does not constitute a form of thought. On the contrary, the whole development + of thought, from the advent of language to the end of childhood, is necessary + in order that the completed sensori- motor structures, which may even be + co-ordinated in the form of empirical groups, may be extended into genuine + operations, which will constitute or reconstruct these groupings and groups at + the level of symbolic behaviour and reflective reasoning. + + -- 127-128 + ## Logic and psychology An axiomatics is an exclusively hypothetico-deductive sci- @@ -171,3 +259,68 @@ Innovation: new possibilities. -- 114 + +Topology: + + But there now arises a problem whose discussion leads to the study of space. + Perceptual constancy is the product of simple regulations and we saw (Chap. 3) + that the absence at all ages of absolute constancy and the existence of adult + “superconstancy” provide evidence for the regulative rather than operational + char- acter of the system. There is, therefore, all the more reason why it + should be true of the first two years. Does not the construction of space, on + the other hand, lead quite rapidly to a grouping structure and even a group + structure in accordance with + + Poincaré’s famous hypothesis concerning the psychologically primary influence of + the “group of displacements?” The genesis of space in sensori-motor + intelligence is com- pletely dominated by the progressive organisation of + responses, and this in effect leads to a “group” structure. But, contrary to + Poincaré’s belief in the a priori nature of the group of dis- placements, this + is developed gradually as the ultimate form of equilibrium reached by this + motor organisation. Successive co-ordinations (combinativity), reversals + (reversibility), detours (associativity) and conservations of position + (identity) gradually give rise to the group, which serves as a necessary + equilibrium for actions. + + At the first two stages (reflexes and elementary habits), we could not even speak + of a space common to the various per- ceptual modalities, since there are as + many spaces, all mutually heterogeneous, as there are qualitatively distinct + fields (mouth, visual, tactile, etc.). It is only in the course of the third + stage that the mutual assimilation of these various spaces becomes system- atic + owing to the co-ordination of vision with prehension. Now, step by step with + these co-ordinations, we see growing up elementary spatial systems which + already presage the form of composition characteristic of the group. Thus, in + the case of interrupted circular reaction, the subject returns to the starting- + point to begin again; when his eyes are following a moving object that is + travelling too fast for continuous vision (falling etc.), the subject + occasionally catches up with the object by dis- placements of his own body to + correct for those of the external moving object. + + But it is as well to realise that, if we take the point of view of the subject + and not merely that of a mathematical observer, the construction of a group + structure implies at least two conditions: the concept of an object and the + decentralisation of movements by correcting for, and even reversing, their + initial egocentricity. In fact, it is clear that the reversibility + characteristic of the group presupposes the concept of an object, and also vice + versa, since to retrieve an object is to make it possible for oneself to return + (by displacing either the object itself or one’s own body). The object is + simply the constant due to the reversible composition of the group. + Furthermore, as Poincaré himself has clearly shown, the idea of displacement as + such implies the possibility of differentiating between irreversible changes of + state and those changes of position that are characterized precisely by their + reversibility (or by their possible correction through movements of one’s own + body). It is obvious, therefore, that without con- servation of objects there + could not be any “group”, since then everything would appear as a “change of + state”. The object and the group of displacements are thus indissociable, the + one con- stituting the static aspect and the other the dynamic aspect of the + same reality. But this is not all: a world with no objects is a universe with + no systematic differentiation between subjective and external realities, a world + that is consequently “adualistic” (J. M. Baldwin). By this very fact, such a + universe would be centred on one’s own actions, the subject being all the more + dominated by this egocentric point of view because he remains + un-self-conscious. But the group implies just the opposite attitude: a complete + decentralisation, such that one’s own body is located as one element among + others in a system of displacements enabling one to distinguish between one’s + own movements and those of objects. + + -- 123-125 |