ABSTRACT
A foundational problem in psychology concerns its relations with other disciplines. Epistemology is a case in point. If psychology is the study of mind and epistemology is the study of knowledge, what is the relation between psychology and epistemology in an empirical investigation of human knowledge? This question arises for any psychological account of cognitive development which refers to two different things:
• children and the development of their minds • knowledge and its development by children
The primary meaning of cognitive development for Flavell (1982) is the former; the primary meaning for Piaget (1985) is the latter. Children’s minds have factual properties. Knowledge has normative properties. A unitary account that deals with both would have to provide an answer to the foundational question about the relations between psychology (directed on children’s development) and epistemology (directed on the development of knowledge).
