ABSTRACT
Piaget has invoked the term ‘genetic epistemology’ to describe his theory of intellectual development in the individual. Many, if not most, modern philosophers would reject such a method of clarifying what is involved in the concept of knowledge. Piaget is opposed to the empiricist thesis that their concepts are derived from the senses. There is much in that remark which requires examination, though the author have no space to do so here. There are a multitude of factors that become relevant here – social influences, cultural influences, motivational factors, the role of emotion, and so on. A human being is not after all a merely cognitive being who develops and grows in isolation. It seems to the author that Piaget’s theory is a blend not only of the empirical and the conceptual (which would be both acceptable and inevitable), but of the empirical and the philosophical.
