مرکز منطقه ای اطلاع رساني علوم و فناوري - Piaget’s Genetic Epistemology, Carnap and Logic and the Problem of the Foundations of Mathematics

Abstract :

Jean Piaget was not only a pioneer of cognitive developmental psychology. He was also the founder of genetic epistemology, which is a new approach to epistemology. The genetic epistemology approach, or the genetic approach to epistemology, offers a kind of epistemology that is closer to psychology. The justification for this new approach, according to Piaget, is the low usage of data provided by empirical psychology in epistemological inquiries. In this way, classical solutions to epistemological problems are generally speculative in nature. One of the examples, which Piaget shows as a justification for this claim, is the logical positivist thesis that logic and mathematics depend upon or are derived from the language or from linguistic conventions. According to Piaget, this thesis is nothing but a speculative claim contradicting scientific data. In this study, this criticism made by Piaget against logical positivism is analyzed and it is argued that it is unjustified. This is because the thesis of logical positivism is a normative thesis in nature and the genetic epistemology approach misses the normative aspect of the problem of the foundations of logics and mathematics.