ABSTRACT
Five of the chapters in this book were originally presented as plenary addresses at the 23rd Annual Symposium of the Jean Piaget Society in Philadelphia in 1993. The theme of that symposium, Values and Knowledge, was chosen for two main reasons. One was that values constitute one of the most pressing concerns of parents, educators, developmental psychologists, clerics, criminologists, people who deal with at-risk populations, and societies in general. Second, the function of values in the construction and use of knowledge—in mental adaptation generally—is worthy of examination. Although he abandoned the topic of values rather early in his career, Piaget created one of the most important paradigms for studying values in his book The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932/1965). As time went on, he came to view values as a somewhat necessary evil in the march toward logical rationality (whose role in human affairs he greatly overvalued) and relegated them to a confused and secondary role in the construction of reason. Was he right? Why not put all of these issues on the table, re-evaluate their importance, and reassess our thinking on them? In the present chapter, I first review Piaget’s thought with respect to values. I then critique Piaget’s functional analysis of evaluative activity and examine alternative interpretations, and, finally, I formulate a conception of how values function and develop within the constructivist paradigm.
