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Les, If I understand Michael, he is only saying he is agnostic regarding mental activity, and he only largely rejects it as unobservable, unscientific mentalism. Is that not correct Michael? MLC:?That is roughly correct.?I like to distinguish knowledge based on experience alone such as our own experience, from empirical and analytic knowledge.?I have a paper on this on the Dare Association website.?That does not mean that self reports are unscientific.?The behavior is the report not what is reported.?So one can study reports of UFO without studying UFO. And?Michael, you do point out that the behaviorists actually do consider some "inners" but which only the subject is privy to. I'm guessing that presenting the Aristotelian distinction and taking cognitive psych as acceptable when about efficient causes (Rachlin), is a rational for substantiating the basic model of behaviorism, that the subject is a function of exogenous causes, stimuli, reinforcements, etc, (although behaviorist often do seem to speculate about possible endogenous factors involved in change). But developmental epistemology grasps far more specificity in its investigation and explanation of mental activity than the behaviorists seem to admit. That is, it does observe mental operations. MLC:?I would tend to disagree.?It does not observe mental operations but their results, again including behavior and self reports. The behaviorists seem to deny the reality of cognitive systems (the wholes). Is that a fair characterization, Michael? MLC:?I gave a complicated answer to that in why I thought is was near impossible to observe accommodation.?Of course there is a general stage of performance.?We get r's of .95 on unrelated mathematical, logical and scientific tasks.?But the r goes down when we include social and moral tasks.?This is an interesting problem.?The Model of Hierarchical Complexity would suggest that it is just a matter of transfer of training unless there is some other deficit.?Animal studies would suggest that development is very task specific and domain specific.? Hence, it makes little sense to study mental activity in its cycles of assimilation of reality (continuous with sensory motor activity) to examine how it regulates its forms in order to regain equilibrium against the perturbations and resistances it must overcome in maintaining its assimilatory activities. Les, I'm inferring from your analogies—from within Euclidean we can't deduce Riemannian theorems, etc?that you are suggesting there is no talking across paradigms between behaviorists and developmental epistemologist, what Zazzo in referring to Piaget and Wallon's discussion called a "dialogue of the deaf." I would agree it is largely true that behaviorism and developmental epistemology have anything in common in the sense that at least for myself, I haven't discovered any axiomatic principles held in common although Michael has stated he believes his HC has many commonalities with Piagetian theory. If so, I thought it might be useful to pursue exactly what those commonalities might be if they exist. But so far it is clear they do not lie with the use of a number of commons words that are used with two different meaning between the two perspectives. As a result of the differences in meaning, it seems clear that the two perspectives do not share the concepts of assimilation, accommodation, behavior, development, stage, observable, in common. My attempt to ask Michael's help in clarify the distinct meanings behaviorism has given these terms seems to confirm the fundamental differences. (And I thank you, Michael, for?being patient with all my questions to that end.) MLC:?Other than the mentalism, I do not believe there are any differences.?Piaget's learning theory was not very well articulated or based on studies.?Behaviorists have tended to see the world as flat, that is no stages.?But the approach are very compatible.?I have listed the commonalities and differences in the Commons & Pekker 2008 paper, again on the website under special issues, World futures. Why not state what each of you think are the incompatibilities?? But remember, I am very mathematical and metaphors do not cut it for me, other than mathematical ones.?I do think the kind of research sometimes is very different.?Contrary to Inhelder and Piaget, there are many group studies based on statistical analysis.? Although I am not against it, I like to see individual data.?Most members of the Piaget society do not seem to have much of an interest in stage or stage change where as behavioral developmental people do.?Like in politics, one party espouses something and then it switches to the other party.? It does seem to me that the basic lack of commonality rests in asserting that research based on the sort of external Platonic idealism implied by behaviorist tests using levels of hierarchical complexity to determine a stage of development by a subject's responses is the only possible scientific method for understanding the human subject since that forecloses almost all of the findings of developmental epistemology. I would also note that behaviorism does seem enamored with the psychological subject and seems to ignore an acting epistemic subject who after all is the seat of the constructive activities of these increasingly complex forms of knowledge in the first place. It is this process of constructive activity that it seems to me is of primary importance if we want to understand how knowledge arises in the human species. Hence, as yet I haven't uncovered what the commonalities might be between behaviorism and developmental epistemology. MLC:?There seem to be two variable that account for the greatest amount of variability behavior.?One is stage and the other is value.?If you read the MHC, it does not leave much room for other varieties of stages.?It is really a stage theory of stage theories as Sara Ross points out.?If you can come up with one that is not reducible, let me know.?I have offered a prize for that.