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Topic: Re:Re:Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge
Posted by: Orlando Martins Lourenço
Date/Time: 2010/10/27 15:15:26

Thank you for your remarks on the child's idea of logical ncessity and counter-suggestions.

You say that a judgment of necessity can be valid, even if nothing in the act is an explicit rebuttal of a contrary judgment, provided the judgment content is such as to be implicitly incompatible with a contrary judgment.?My question is: How can we be sure that this is the case? In my opinion, Piaget resort to justifications and counter-suggestions just to see if a certain child is giving or not a judgement of logical necessity. The examples of Descartes and Kant you mention are another issue than that involving children's sense of logical necessity.

It seems to me that you see the child's sense of logical necessity as a nothing-or-all phenomenon. I think that we we can find different degrees on that sense, and, among other things, counter-suggestions are just a means for determining to what extent a given child has constructed already a determined degree of logical necessity or necessary knowledge concerning a certain domain of knowledge.

You also say that confronting children with contrary judgments directed on both lower and higher levels of understanding was ubiquitous in Piaget's studies. This, I also accept and is clearly true. But my main claim is to argue that when Piaget confronted a given child with contrary judgments directed on both lower and higher levels of understanding, those contrary judgments were presented only as contrary (and not justified) responses from a child of the same age as that of the child being interviewed. In other words, it seems to me that we can resort to types of counter-suggestions not used by Piaget. Among other types, I have thought of three other types: 1) to confront the child being interviewed with a justified respose from a child of the same age as that of the child interviewed (i.e., with an operational argument in the case of a pre-operational judgment or answer; with a functional argument in the case of an operational answer or judgment); 2) to confront the child being interviewed with a contrary (and not justified) judgment from an adult who knows a lot about the issue at hand (i.e., to confront the child in question with an operational judgment if the child initially gave a preoperational answer; with a preoperational judgment if the child initially gave an operatinal response); and 3) to confront the child being interviewed with a contrary justified judgment from the above mentioned adult.

I do think that resorting to these types of counter-suggestions allows us to get a better understanding of the child's sense of logical necessity, mainly when we see such understanding as a developing process.


Entire Thread

Topic(Point at the topics to see relevant reminders)Date PostedPosted By
Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:12:48Leslie Smith
     Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:13:32Orlando Martins Lourenço
          Re:Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:14:22Leslie Smith
     Re:Re:Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:15:26Orlando Martins Lourenço
                    Re:Re:Re:Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:17:19Leslie Smith
                         Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Levels of knowing & Necessary knowledge2010/10/27 15:18:35Orlando Martins Lourenço

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