ABSTRACT
This chapter begins by briefly situating the concept of consciousness within Jean Piaget's work. It presents Piaget's answers to some questions concerning the nature, functional origins, and functions of consciousness, and examines each time how these are treated in contemporary research. The chapter describes the some hypotheses concerning the nature, functional origins, and functions of consciousness. It refers the reader to F. Pons and P. L. Harris for a discussion of some developmental hypotheses and to M. Ferrari et al. for a discussion of the isomorphic parallelism hypothesis. The distinction between the contents of consciousness-knowledge in relation to the object of knowledge and the cognitive functioning of the subject is still relatively common. Almost all of Piaget's experiments on consciousness concern the transition between practical and conceptual consciousness. The chapter concludes with a synthesis of answers to the questions and discusses implications for future research.
