ABSTRACT
An attempt is made in this chapter to sketch an answer to the following question: How can one account for the cognitive development of the child as mental development? The concept of the mental is explained here in terms of consciousness: a certain mental activity is said to consist of a certain form of consciousness. These more or less complex forms are elaborated by a method based on reflection upon the mental activities themselves, and not by some analogy with something other than these activities. The forms can be seen as making up laws of consciousness since the statements concerning them establish theoretically what belongs to the very sense of such and such a form of consciousness. This elaboration of forms or laws of consciousness is, as is well known, the task of a phenomenology of consciousness as conceived by E. Husserl. 1
