ABSTRACT
Epistemology can be taken in a purely descriptive sense or a normative sense. Correlatively, cooperation is an epistemically virtuous form of social interaction explaining the development of rationality, whereas conformity does not; at least such is the hypothesis advanced in Piaget's program of genetic epistemology. If Jean Piaget has a genetic epistemology and not merely a genetic psychology, then raising questions about his social epistemology will undoubtedly raise questions about the role of social factors in the epistemic enterprise. Relationalism is a central feature of Piaget's social psychology, genetic epistemology, and social epistemology. For Piaget, society is explained in terms of the relations among individuals, not in terms of the non-relational properties of individuals. Piaget often insisted that the social is a necessary condition for the development of knowledge and rationality: social life is a necessary condition for the development of logic.
