Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2000 19:08:49 -0800 (PST)
Subject: HAB: Habermas and Piaget



Steve:

In my long response (11/11:"Individuation & Sociality") to Matthew
Piscioneri (11/10: "Hab's sociocentrism"), I yielded to your posting
at one point, without having read your online resources referenced
there, and now I've made time to read a lot of what you referenced:
your own interesting "article" proposals, discussion of ways of
relating and conclusions of that article; and all points in ch. 3 of
your book where JH is mentioned or referenced. So I'd like to return
to the point.

Matthew wrote that "I worry about Habermas's uptake of Piaget's model
EXCEPT as a heuristic or analogical device which I think it is
clearly intended to be more than."

Though I agree with you, Steve, that "using Piaget's model as an
analogical device would be a mistake," I don't believe that it's a
"given that Habermas wants to construct a precise theory of social
functioning." However, it appears that you do want to construct a
precise theory of social functioning, in terms of "political
culture". Or maybe not. In any case, your article and ch. 3 or your
book are not engaged with JH's work, rather with Kohlberg (and
thereby Piaget)--which you clearly indicated in your posting, of
course. JH too is engaged with Kohlberg, obviously, but not in a way
similar to your use of Kohlberg, and this is important to note. So,
though your references to Piaget aren't informative for understanding
JH's interest in Piaget, your use of Piaget via Kohlberg is a very
interesting example of what political psychology might attend to, and
one might hope that JH's work will basically influence what you were
trying to do. 

Anyway, "Habermas's uptake of Piaget's model" (M) is an important
issue. On the one hand, in JH's moral development essays (CES and
MCCA), Piaget is indirectly relevant via Kohlberg and via JH's
revision of Kohlbergian theory through his own analysis of
role-competence development. Yet a post-Piagetian revision of
Kohlberg might have no effect on the usefulness of moral-cognitive
developmental modeling for JH. Indeed, it *does* not, in my view,
because the field of moral development research is not any longer
dependent on Piaget's beginning contributions; Piaget and Kohlberg
are key figures within a much later community of reconstructive
scientific discourse, including JH's collaborations with
Nunner-Winkler, Thomas Wren & company's work on "the moral domain"
and "the moral self" (MIT Press, early 1990s), Elliot Turiel, and
others.

On the other hand, in _Theory of Communicative Action_, Piaget is
employed outside of a Kohlbergian context (if I recall), as part of
anthropological considerations of our form of life. In this latter
context especially, one might be concerned about the "uptake" (an odd
term for me) in terms of Piaget's alleged biologicism or
naturalism--and this seems to be the focus of Matthew's concern, for
the sake of relating development to evolution, rather than focusing
on the moral senses of political culture. I responded to Matthew on
this earlier. Let me add, though, that Matthew's use of 'analogical'
can be considered emblematic of a profound kind of question, given
that Habermas relies on notions of isomorphism and homology: What IS
the status or nature or basic character of model-theoretical
formulation? In philosophy of "hard" science, modelling can be
considered rigorously analogical, in convergent realism for instance,
where convergence pertains to the narrowing gap between
model-as-analogy (indefinite description) and model-as-denotation (or
definite description). Hermeneutically speaking--for all cases of
inquiry where interpretation of ordinary language is necessary, be it
orally or textually--understanding *must* work with analogy, in
direct proportion to the cultural distance involved (either
historical distance or ethnic difference). 

Your "details of how the Piagetian approach (spec., Kohlberg's work)
can be applied to collectivities" is an important counter-example to
a Habermasian approach, since your perspective does not yet consider
the issue of role-competence development which Habermas considered
vital to the scientific viability of Kohlbergian work; therefore your
elaborately detailed, interesting considerations are a great
opportunity waiting to happen, for application of JH's work to the
analysis of political culture. 

According to JH, Kohlberg is too cognitivist--so too, by implication,
is Piaget (as the field of social-cognitive research addresses
widely). But there are additional issues critical to the employment
of Piagetian thinking (and the importance of post-Piagetian and
non-Piagetian cognitive science), beyond the need for sociocognitive
balance, which JH addresses. There is the issue of Piaget's "genetic
epistemology," which is highly relevant for cognitive anthropology
(and for a complete discourse on social evolution)--NOT that there is
no hope for genetic epistemology altogether (indeed, quite the
opposite!); but rather: To what degree is Piaget's genetic
epistemology tenable, given what is becoming focal for cognitive
science? IS there a biologism in Piaget's late thinking--or is he
basically anticipating cognitive neuroscience in a prospective,
discursively open (ontologically uncommitted) way? Critique of
Piaget's genetic epistemology can be immensely constructive for
cognitive anthropology, cognitive linguistics (Lakoff), evolutionary
epistemology, evolutionary psychology, and whatever other
interdisciplinarity that pretends to benefit from the burgeoning
"century of the brain" that cognitive neuroscience is promising. 

Indeed, in a manner of speaking, "societal development is like
individual cognitive / moral development, but [the importance of the
observation that] other dynamics need to be introduced" remains to be
developed (e.g., how the "like" in your comment is a matter of
homologies in JH's fractalically 3-fold hermeneutic or metascience of
social evolution).  If "at the end of the day, [your] analysis shows
that H.'s use of Piagetian theory remains valid," then--may I kindly
say--the fruit of this remains to be digested, in terms of JH's
provisional employment of Piagetian perspectives in
_TCA_--exemplarily, it seems to me, while not ontologically--and JH's
starkly post-Piagetian hermeneutics of moral cognition in _CES_ and
_MCCA_.

Granting that I may be as difficult to read as you are, best regards,

Gary






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