Logical Consistency and the Child: A Critical Examination of Piaget's View*

Jean Piaget is a well known developmental cognitive psychologist whose main interest centres around genetic epistemology-the study of the way knowledge is acquired in individuals. It is Piaget's belief that many traditional epistemologi-~ a l problems can be solved by empirical means (Piaget 1%5). Much of Piaget's work deals with the development of logic in children. His own method of investigating children's thought is an interview approach, where the experimenter has a clear idea of the questions he wants to ask but where the direction and form of subsequent questions is determined by the child's answers. The claim that will be examined in this paper is the contention that young children (below twelve or so) see no necessity forcertain logical laws such as the law of non-contradiction on a conceptual level. This claim has been advocated by Piaget (1966) and also by Johnson (1976), following Piaget. Piaget contends that complex logical modes of thinking are developed from the child's overt activities on macroscopic objects. In infancy the actions ar