ABSTRACT
A central concept in Piaget’s theory is that behavior and thought function as parts of a regulatory system facilitating an individual’s adaptation to his or her environment. From this perspective, values stand for the diverse patterns of regulation entered into by all persons in a given environment and incorporated into their thoughts and actions. Because our human environment is largely organized through interaction with other people, many—but not all—values emerge within a social context. Values thus mediate between self and world, including the social world, and any theory of value must necessarily tackle the extremely difficult problems of the growth of the self and the socialization of individuals. The attempt to formulate such ambitious theories is useful because it forces us to consider whole persons as agents and as recipients, a salutary change from the fragmentary view of the person so common in modern psychology. Although such ambitious theorizing is fraught with intellectual peril, contributors to this volume have been willing to at least point us in the direction of such a theory. Indeed, much of the research and thinking reported here derives from a small set of problems which—if one could ever solve them—would lead to such a general theory of development. This set of problems can be divided into three issues: (a) What role does valuation play in the growth of individuals into integrated persons, each with a unique suite of predilections and capacities? (b) How are values embodied in the activities, feelings, and thoughts of individuals? (c) How does self individuation and differentiation from others occur within a culture without loss of self-identification with that culture and its values?
