ABSTRACT
First I would like to clarify some double meanings of the words “value” and “logic” and the way they enter into thinking about intelligence. The relevant distinction has been made many times about logic. Most recently, Henri Wermus reminded us that we should distinguish between two ways in which logic might figure in Piaget. Sometimes Piaget uses logic to talk about a domain of knowledge used by the subjects he is studying; sometimes he uses logic as the theoretical construct, as the matter out of which his representations are modelled. The first sense studies the child’s logic just as it studies the child’s geometry. The second uses logic to study the child’s intelligence in all its departments. One could call the two senses “the subject’s logic” and “the psychologist’s logic”. I would have intervened yesterday to say that these two are not that separate. Nevertheless, as a first approximation, it is good to see them as pulling in opposite directions even though they are tightly unified.
