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APPENDIX
Conclusions
toward
a
Rational
Pragmatism
.
18.
The
purpose
of
this
APPENDIX is to establish some connections be-
tween
all
of
the
foregoing
and
certain
modern
streams
of
thought
--es-
pecially ideas from Chomsky
in
linguistics
as
applied
in
the
work
of
Stephen
Krashen
to second language acquisition
and
Frank
Smith
to
reading
and
writing
. To a
lesser
extent
we
relate
to
Piagetian
psychology,
but
primarily
as
a backdrop against which to
see
more
clearly
the
distinctive
character
of Chomskyan theory.
The
choice
of
authors
to
examine
in
this
context, is certainly
an
arbitrary
one,
but
has
not
been
made
without
forethought.
It
has
been
motivated
by
the
intention
to
outline
a
rational
pragmatism
along
the
lines
of
Peirce
and
Einstein
and
to discuss some
of
its
practical implications.
But
first a couple of
retrospective
comments.
18.1 LOOKING BACK THEN AHEAD
18.1.1
In
spite
of
the
fact
that
the
writings included above
are
dated
from a
maximum
of
just
over a
century
to a
minimum
of
almost
four
decades
prior
to
this
writing
in
July
1988,
they
are
all
current
in
addres-
sing
problems
of
concern to
present-day
theories
of
language
in
relation
to
experience. Because
of
the
interrelatedness
of
questions
about
this
general
intellectual
problem,
there
is
a
certain
arbitrariness
in
the
order
in
which
the
foregoing articles
have
been
presented--all
three
parts
of
the
book
in
fact deal
with
the
same
overall problem,
though
different aspects
of
it
are
emphasized. However,
the
problem is
the
central
question
of
how
linguistic
and
other
representations
come to correspond to
the
facts
of
experience. While
it
is
never
claimed
that
this
correspondence is
perfect
or
complete,
the
fact
that
it
is even approximately correct
in
any
case
whatever
is a
mystery
that
commands
attention.
18.1.2
With
this
in
mind
,
it
is
the
purpose
of
this
last
section,
separated
from
the
main
body
of
the
text
in
deference to
the
distin-
guished
authors
of
the
preceding selections (none
of
whom
is still living),
to
try
to
show
certain
connections
between
what
has
here
been
called
"classic pragmatism"
and
present-day
thinking.
Though
the
choice of
modern
streams
of
thought
is
more
arbitrary
than
the
selection
of
writings
about
classic pragmatism,
as
noted,
it
was
made
with
some
premeditation.
Two
of
the
modern
streams
may
be
considered
primarily
223
Oller, J. W., Jr., (1989). Conclusions toward a rational pragmatism. In Author
(Ed.), Language and Experience: Classic Pragmatism (pp. 223-250). Lanham,
New Jersey: University Press of America. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1115.5680
224 Oller
theoretical
in
character
and
two
may
be
thought
of
as
practical applica-
tions
of
present-day
thinking.
18.1.3
The
two
theoretical
streams
to
be
considered
are
this
author's
interpretation
of
Chomsky's
particular
brand
of
Cartesian
rationalism
and
Piaget's
approach
to
human
psychology
under
the
guise of
his
particular
variety
of
intellectual
constructivism
.
These
theoretical
approaches
have
been
juxtaposed
(Piatelli
-
Palmarini
1980)
in
a
way
that
suggests
the
probable directions
of
present-day
inquiry
for
some
time
to
come. Also, since Chomsky
in
particular
has
been
influenced
by
Peirce
to
a considerable
extent
(Chomsky 1975, 1979, 1980),1
and
since
his
remarks
about
the
freedom
of
language
use
from
stimulus
control
are
coincident
with
Einstein's
claim for
the
logical
independence
of
conceptualizations
and
sense-impressions,
without
too
much
difficulty
Chomsky's
thinking
may
be
viewed
as
a
rational
extension
of
classic
pragmatism.
Piaget's
thinking, on
the
other
hand,
is
seen
more
as
a
sounding
board
for
contrast,
though
his
approach too
has
been
immeasurably
more
rational
than
that
of
the
behaviorists.
18.1.4
The
two practical
streams,
on
the
other
hand,
both
deeply
influenced
by
Chomsky's ideas
about
generative
grammar,
merge
into
one.
Stephen
Krashen
has
been
primarily
concerned
with
understanding
non-primary
language acquisition,
and
Frank
Smith
with
explaining
literacy,
but
their
thinking
comes
together
so
smoothly
that
it
might
be
argued
that
any
differences
are
negligible.
The
particular
ideas
from
each
of
them
which
are
to
be
examined
briefly
are
Krashen's
input
hypothesis
and
Smith's
approach
to
reading
and
writing.
18.1.5
Relating
the
foregoing
streams
of
thought,
then, to
ideas
distilled from
Peirce
and
Einstein
(ideas
elaborated
to
some
extent
primarily
by
Dewey
and
Piaget),
the
intent
here
is
to
offer a
sketch
of
rational
pragmatism,
as
close
as
possible
to
Peirce's
thinking
under
the
heading
pragmaticism.
18.1.6 We
have
already
met
Piaget
(in
Chapter
16) so
there
is
somewhat
less
work
to do
in
developing
his
line
of
thought
than
in
the
lIn
his
conversations with
Mitsou
Ronat,
Chomsky said
at
one point, "The
philosopher to whom I feel closest and whom
I'm
almost paraphrasing is Charles
Sanders Peirce .
..
Peirce argued
that
to account for
the
growth
of
knowledge,
one
must
assume
that
'man's
mind has a
natural
adaptation to imagining correct
theories
of
some kinds', some principle
of
'abduction'
...
" (1979, p. 71).
APPENDIX
225
case
of
Chomsky,
Krashen,
and
Smith.
Chomsky's
thinking
is
foundational
to
the
latter
two, so
it
will
require
the
greater
amount
of
space. (No claim
here
is
made
for completeness.
The
intent
is
to
provide
merely
a
rough
outline
suitable
for
establishing
certain
connections.)
18.2
PIAGET
AND CHOMSKY
18.2.1
AB
Dewey
and
Einstein
implied,
and
as
Peirce
explicitly
stated
in
his
writings
(Peirce
1908, p. 325)
much
of
human
intellectual
capacity
must
be
innate.
Chomsky
augments
and
develops
that
theme
tracing
it
back
to
Descartes
and
the
rationalists
of
the
seventeenth
century
.
Piaget
on
the
other
hand
minimizes
the
importance
of
"a
priori
or
innate
cognitive
structures
in
man" (1980, p. 23)
and
stresses
the
idea
that
intelligence develops
in
stages, beginning
with
and
progressing
forward
t
hrough
"successive actions
performed
on objects" (p. 23).
18.2.2
For
this
reason,
Piaget
calls
his
theory
genetic
epistemol
-
ogy.2
He
sees
the
progressive
fitting
of
intellectual
structures
(group-
ing
s)
to
the
facts
of
experience
as
an
active process
of
equilibration
wh
ere
more
and
more
complex cognitive
structures
are
constantly
built
up
from
less
complex ones.
These
structures
begin
with
sensory-motor
act-
ivit
ies
of
assimilation
(adjusting
the
objects
and
facts
of
experience
to
fit
int
o developing
cognitive
schema--structures
and
groupings)
and
accom-
mo
d
at
i
on
(adjusting
the
cognitive
schema
to
fit
the
facts)
until
the
le
arner
arrives
at
formal
operations--Iogical
processes
which
among
oth
er t
hings
are
characterized
by
their
complete
reversibility.
18.2.3
Mathematical
operations
such
as
adding 2
to
7
to
get
9
and
the
n
subtracting
2
to
get
back
to
7,
or multiplying x
times
3
to
get
3x
and
2
The
meaning
of
this
term
was identical
in
Piaget's
use
apparently to
that
by
James
(1907c, see 10.20 above)
when
he
spoke of a
genetic
theory
of
truth,
and
by Dewey (1916)
where
he
wrote "One of
the
points which gave
much
offense
in
the
essays [his own dated 1903; reissued
later
as Essays in Experimental Logic]
was th e reference
to
genetic
method
--
to a
natural
history
of
knowledge
(p.
66)"
and
on
t
he
next
page explained
"To
set
genesis
in
opposition to analysis is
merely t o overlook
the
fact
that
the
sciences
of
existence have found
that
considerations
of
genesis
afford
their
most effective
methods
of
analysis"
(p.
67).
Therefo
re
,
it
does
not
seem
impossible
that
this
term
might
have come to Piaget
through
some influence
of
these
pragmatists
in
particular--though
he
may
not
have
co
nsciously realized
the
origin
of
the
term. Piaget (1971) does cite Dewey
in
th
e book, Genetic Epistemology
and
James
in
a
number
of
places (e.g. Piaget
1947a, pp. 96-97).
226 Oller
then
dividing
by
3
to
obtain
x again,
and
the
like,
illustrate
the
logical
meaning
of
reversibility. Physical actions,
or
concrete
operations
as
Piaget
calls
them,
are
merely
precursors
to
full-fledged
formal
operations
since
they
are
not
completely reversible. We
cannot
unlight
a
fIre,
and
though
we
may
leave a
room
and
return
to
it,
this
cannot
be
done
without
a lapse
of
time,
and
some
carpet
wear.
That
is,
events
in
space-time
are
only
partially
reversible, while
purely
logical
relations
are
completely so
(setting
aside
the
psycho-physiological
events
that
accom-
pany
those
operations).
18.2.4
Of
course, Peirce,
James,
and
Dewey (not
to
mention
Russell
and
Einstein)
took
more
or
less
explicit notice
of
the
fact
that
logical
operations
as
much
as
concrete
operations
require
time
and
space
when
actually
carried
out
and
that
in
this
sense
they
are
not
completely
reversible
any
more
than
physical
events
or
other
actions are.
Apart
from
this
caveat,
Piaget's
intellectual
constructivism
has
much
in
common
with
the
pragmatism
of
James
and
Dewey,
though
Dewey,
at
least, did
not
reject
the
claim
of
Kant
that
experience
requires
prior
(innate)
knowl-
edge. Dewey
admitted
that
abstract
conceptual possibilities (categories)
must
pre-exist
their
investment
with
experiential
meaning.
18.2.5 Peirce, on
the
other
hand,
was
less
committed
to
a
materialis-
tic
outlook
than
James,
or
even
Dewey.
He
himself
accepted
the
major
part
of
Kant's
rationalism
and
Galileo's
"il
lume
naturale"--the
inner
light
which guides
our
understanding
and
the
development
of
knowledge
of
the
world.
Peirce
argued
that
scientific progress
as
we
know
it
would
have
been
impossible except for a
pretuning
of
human
intellect
to
the
physical
universe.
He
wrote:
There
is
a reason,
an
interpretation,
a logic,
in
the
course
of
scientific
advance,
and
this
indisputably proves
to
him
who
has
perceptions
of
rational
or
significant
relations
that
man's
mind
must
have
been
attuned
to
the
truth
of
things
in
order
to
discover
what
he
has
discovered (1908, p. 325).
18.2.6
In
this
same
connection
Peirce
quoted
Galileo who
said
"of two
hypotheses
the
simpler is
to
be
preferred" (p. 255). At first,
Peirce
thought
Galileo should
have
said
"logically simpler".
Later
he
came
to
believe
that
it
is exactly
the
simpler
hypothesis
in
the
sense
of
the
more
facile
and
natural,
the
one
that
instinct
suggests,
that
must
be
preferred;
for
the
reason
that,
unless
man
have
a
natural
bent
in
accordance
with
nature's,
he
has
no
chance
of
understanding
nature
at
all. .
..
I
do
not
mean
that
logical simplicity
has
no value
at
all,
but
only
that
its
value
is badly
APPENDIX
227
secondary to
that
of
simplicity
in
the
other
sense
(1908, pp. 325-326).
18.2.7 Because
of
this
one
point,
Peirce's
pragmaticism
differed
substantially
from
the
pragmatism
of
James,
though
less so from
that
of
Dewey.
Interestingly
Einstein
agreed
with
Peirce
(and
Kant)
when
he
commented
that
the
"comprehensibility"
of
the
world
of
experience is
"a
miracle" (1.1.7). While
both
might
have
agreed
in
part
with
Piaget's
insistence on
pushing
constructivism
as
far
as
it
might
go,
they
would
have
been
compelled to
assert
that
it
would
have
to
be
assisted
by
an
innate
system
of
logical possibilities
that
pre-exist
the
possibility
of
any
experience
or
any
construction
to
which
it
might
lead.
This
latter
suggestion is
one
that
has
been
developed lately
by
Chomsky.
18.2.8 As a
rationalist
of
a
more
radical
sort
than
Piaget, Chomsky
has
taken
a
dim
view of constructivism.
Whereas
Piaget
is
an
extreme
"rationalist"
if
compared against
the
American behaviorists such
as
J.
B.
Watson
or
B.
F. Skinner,
he
is a materialistic
rationalist
if
compared
against Chomsky
and
his collaborators. Chomsky's
rationalism
is
ideal
in
character--scarcely
needing
either
the
physical world
or
social interaction.
Some believe
that
he
has
gone too
far
in
his
idealism,
but
his
argument
requires
a hearing.
18.2.9 Chomsky contends (much
in
the
manner
of
Peirce
and
Einstein)
that
human
language
never
comes fully
under
the
control
of
behavioral "stimuli"
of
any sort.
It
is
in
Chomsky's words,
not
only innovative
and
potentially infinite
in
scope,
but
also free
from
the
control
of
detectable stimuli,
either
external
or
internal
.
It
is because
of
this
freedom from
stimulus
control
that
language can
serve
as
an
instrument
of
thought
and
self-expression
...
(1972, p.
12).
Chomsky's
statement
is a close
paraphrase
of
Einstein
where
he
says:
the
concepts which arise
in
our
thought
and
in
our
linguistic
expressions
are
all--when viewed logically--the free creations
of
thought
which cannot inductively
be
gained from sense-experiences
(3.11).
An
important
difference from Chomsky is
that
Peirce
and
Einstein
accepted
the
dualism
of
mind
and
body
as
unresolvable
and
necessary.
Chomsky (1988, p. 145) rejects
the
need
for
the
term
''body'' (or even
"other minds")
and
hence is a
more
radical
rationalist
than
either
of
them.
Chomsky
is
an
idealist.
18.2.10 However, saying
that
langua5"e
is
"free from
stimulus
control"
is
not
the
same
as
saying
that
it
is
unconstrained
altogether. Chomsky
228 Oller
goes
on
to
point
out
that
Cartesian
discussion
of
the
limits
of
mechanical
explanation
. . .
took
note
of
a
third
property
of
the
normal
use
of
language, namely,
its
coherence
and
its
"appropriateness
to
the
situation"--which
of
course is
an
entirely
different
matter
from control by
external
stimuli
(p. 12).
While some
have
maintained
that
"appropriateness"
is
precisely
what
is
meant
by
"control
by
external
stimuli",
this
argument
cannot
be
maintained
if
the
logical
independence
of
signs
and
what
they
may
be
used
to
represent
is
admitted--and
this
must
be
admitted
according
to
classic
pragmatism
(especially, see
Einstein's
several
remarks
on
this,
1.2.3, 1.7.1, 3.9, 3.11,
and
3.12)
18.2.11
Another
point
of
agreement
between
Chomsky, Peirce,
and
Einstein
concerns
what
can
be
said
about
how
appropriateness
is
achieved.
Einstein
wrote
in
1936
that
nothing
can
be
said concerning
the
manner
in
which
the
concepts
are
to
be
made
and
connected,
and
how
we
are
to
coordinate
them
to
the
experiences (1.1.9).
Compare
Chomsky
in
1972:
Honesty
forces
us
to
admit
that
we
are
as
far
today
as
Descartes
was
three
centuries
ago from
understanding
just
what
enables
a
human
to
speak
in
a
way
that
is innovative, free
from
stimulus
control,
and
also
appropriate
and
coherent.
This
is a
serious
problem
that
the
psychologist
and
biologist
must
ultimately
face
and
that
cannot
be
talked
out
of
existence
by
invoking "habit"
or
"conditioning"
or
"natur-
al selection". .
..
Neither
physics
nor
biology
nor
psychology gives
us
any
clue
as
to
how
to
deal
with
these
matters
(pp. 12-13).
18.2.12
To
appreciate
why
Chomsky's
argument,
like
Einstein's
before
him,
is likely
to
remain
uncontradicted
into
the
indefinite
future,
it
is
necessary
to
appreciate
something
of
the
scope
of
the
language
problem
that
the
theoretician
faces. An
important
part
of
the
argument
may
be
developed roughly
as
follows.
18.2.13
George
Miller
[1920-present],
former
Harvard
psychologist
and
collaborator
of
Chomsky,
estimated
(1964)
that
the
number
of
words
that
can
form
an
appropriate
continuation
at
any
given
point
in
a
text
of
English is on
the
average
about
ten. Call
this
number
"Miller's average".
To
make
it
larger
would only
strengthen
the
conclusion
toward
which
we
are
moving
and
it
must
be
admitted
that
Miller's
average
is excessively
conservative, i.e.,
much
too low.
APPENDIX
229
18.2.
14
With
that
in
mind, suppose we
set
an
arbitrary
limit
on
the
length
of
a
text.
If
this
is
done, we
may
estimate
the
number
of
possible
texts
of
that
length
by
employing Miller's average.
If
there
were, for
example, a
length
limit
of
two
words,
there
would
be
ten
words
that
might
fit
in
the
first word position
and
ten
in
the
second
which
wo
uld
yield one
hundred
possible
texts
of
length
two (10
times
10 = 102 =
100).
If
texts
of
up
to
three
words
were
allowed,
there
would
be
about
one
thousand
possible
texts
of
that
length
(10
times
10
times
10 = 103 =
1000),
and
so on.
That
is,
the
number
of
possible
texts
can
be
estimated
by
raising
Miller's average
to
the
power
of
the
number
of
words
in
the
text.
18.2.15
But
clearly
there
is no
necessary
upper
bound
which
must
be
chosen. And,
as
was
noted
already,
the
number
of
words
that
can
form
an
appropriate
continuation
sometimes
is
much
greater
than
10.
For
instance,
when
numbers
are
included
within
a
text,
the
number
of
possible
continuations
may
skyrocket all
the
way
to
infinity,
as
in
the
sentence,
" is a number."
But
to
admit
this
only
strengthens
the
argument
under
consideration.
Therefore,
let
Miller's
average
stand,
and
to
form a
clearer
idea
of
the
scope
of
the
language
creativity
problem,
suppose
we
take
the
length
of
a novel
as
a
reasonable
bench-mark
for
estimating
the
number
of
possible
texts
in
a given language.
That
is,
suppose we
estimate
the
number
of
possible
texts
of
novel-
length.
It
is
not
unusual
for a novel
to
reach
a
length
of
about
200
pages
with
say
about
250 words
per
page
or
a
total
length
of
50,000 words. Now
by
using
Miller's
average
the
number
of
possible
texts
of
50,000
words
would
be
1050000
(ten
raised
to
the
fifty-
thousandth
power)--any
one
of
which
would
be
comprehensible
to
any
normal
native
speaker
of
the
languag
e
in
question.
18.2.16
To
appreciate
the
scope
of
the
capacity
just
described,
it
is
necessary
to
get
an
idea
of
just
how large a
number
we
are
speaking
of
and
then
to
realize
that
it
is
much
too low
an
estimate
since
the
number
of
possible
texts
cannot
be
limited
to
novel-length.
Furthermore,
it
is
important
to
bear
in
mind
that
only a
human
being
can
understand
something
as
complex
as
a novel. No
other
artificial
or
biological
intelligence
that
we
know
anything
about
can
even
come close
to
handling
such
a complex
network
of
relations
as
are
found
in
any
coherent
novel.
18.2.17
The
number
of
possible
texts
of
novel-length would
be
a one
followed
by
50,000 zeroes--
if
we
squeezed
2500
characters
onto
each page,
it
would
require
20 full
pages
to
write
it
down.
Compare
this
number
to
the
number
of
particles
in
the
entire
universe
according
to
modern
230 Oller
physics,
something
on
the
order
of
1080
(Crick,
1981, p. 51).
The
number
of
particles
in
the
universe
is negligibly small
when
compared
against
the
number
of
possible texts.
18.2.18 Or,
think
in
terms
of
time.
If
we
use
20 billion
years
as
an
estimate
of
the
age
of
the
universe,
the
total
number
of
micro-seconds
(thousandths
of
seconds)
that
have
elapsed
since
the
beginning
is
about
6.3
times
1020.
If
this
quantity
were
stood on
end
and
measured
as
a
height
against
the
number
of
possible
texts
of
novel-length,
the
total
number
of
micro-seconds would
be
an
unnoticeable
quantity
by
comparison.
18.2.19 Now,
here
is
the
problem:
if
the
physical
universe
is
compara
-
tively so
limited
in
scope, how comes
it
that
in
such
a
short
span
as
may
be
allowed for biological existence,
or
for
human
experience,
there
should
come
to
be
such
a powerful capacity as
that
represented
by
normal
human
language
use?
Setting
aside
the
related
problem
of
language origin for a
moment,
consider language acquisition:
how
could language capacity
be
built
up
from
scratch
out
of
the
few
and
impoverished cases
of
language
use
that
one
has
the
opportunity
to
observe over
the
course
of
even
a
long lifetime?
Never
mind
the
much
shorter
period
of
four
or
five
years
during
which
most
of
the
language acquisition
problem
is
solved by
human
children. Or,
returning
to
the
origin question,
how
could
such
language
capacity
be
the
product
of
experience
over
the
limited
time
allowed
to
the
existence
of
the
physical universe?
These
are
non-trivial
psychological
and
biological questions.
18.2.20 According
to
Piaget's
constructivism,
the
progress
from
stage
to
stage
in
the
intellectual
development
of
a child is
based
on a
series
of
inductive leaps
up
the
various
steps
in
the
stairway
of
abstraction.
The
progress
made, according
to
Piaget
(and
according
to
the
pragmatism
of
William
James),
constantly
achieves
structures
or
groupings
that
were
impossible
and
did
not
exist in
the
previous stage.
That
is
to
say,
Piaget
sees
intellectual
development progressing from a simple logic
to
ever
more
complex logics.
18.2.21
Chomsky
disagrees (for
reasons
developed also,
by
Peirce
and
Dewey).
He
does
not
deny
the
existence
of
stages
in
human
maturation,
nor
does
he
contest
the
fact
that
these
stages
give
the
appearance
of
escalating
levels
of
complexity.
Rather,
he
insists
that
in
order
for
the
process
of
maturation
to
unfold as
it
does,
the
intellectual
gains
that
are
observed
must
have
been
pre-programmed
into
the
genetic
material
of
the
organism
.
Chomsky
contends
that
the
formation
of
correct
hypotheses
APPENDIX
231
requires
innate
biases: 'you have
to
have a set
of
prejudices in advance for
induction
to
take place" (in Piatelli-Palmarini 1980, p. 259).
18.2.22
For
instance,
take
the
acquisition
of
predicates
to
be
applied
to
objects, e.g. "green" in
relation
to
the
color
of
emeralds. Chomsky
claims
that
such a predicate,
or
such predicates
in
general,
cannot
be
discovered
by
inductive
abstraction
(by examining
emeralds
and
any
number
of
other
things
one
after
another),
but
must,
in
an
important
sense,
be
taken
for
granted
in
advance.
He
writes: 'you
must
in
some
sense have the whole set
of
predicates from the beginning" (p. 261).
Otherwise, inference
by
induction from
the
specific facts
of
experience is
quite
impossible. Or,
as
Peirce
or
Dewey
might
have
argued, a
particular
predicate, "green" (as
of
emeralds), say, would
not
have
the
meaning
that
it
does
if
it
did
not
stand
in
just
the
tensional oppositions
that
it
does
stand
in
with
reference
to
the
entire
rest
of
the
spectrum
of
color
as
revealed
to
us
in
experience.
18.2.23
Emerald
green
is no
more
discovered
by
induction
than
the
brightness
of
the
sun
is inductively
abstracted
from
the
rest
of
the
sky.
It
is
given
in
the
character
of
the
physiological
apparatus
and
the
nature
of
the
external
world
with
which
that
apparatus
interacts.
The
intellect
must
pre-specifY
the
rich
set
of
visual
and
other
distinctions which
the
physiological
apparatus
is capable
of
representing. We do
not
"learn"
in
the
traditional
sense
of
the
term
to appreciate
such
"concepts"
but
we
possess
them
and
their
intrinsic value
beforehand
or
else
intellectual
growth
("learning") would
be
impossible.
In
fact,
as
Kant, Peirce,
and
Einstein
argued,
any
sort
of
experience
whatever
would
be
impossible.
18.2.24 Psychologist,
Jerry
Fodor
has
set
Chomsky's
innateness
hypothesis
against
the
traditional
view
of
"learning". "It
is",
he
asserts,
"never possible to
learn
a
richer
logic on
the
basis
of
a
weaker
logic,
if
what
you
mean
by
learning
is hypothesis formation
and
confirmation. Yet
I say again
that
learning
must
be
non-demonstrative
inference;
there
is
nothing
else for
it
to be" (1980, p. 148).
In
other
words,
Piaget's
constructivism
is
not
an
explanation for
the
progress
that
he
observes
from
stage
to stage--and
it
matters
little
what
the
stages
are
for
this
argument
since
Piaget's
account
in
principle can only
be
a
partial
history
of
what
occurs.
It
is
not
an
explanation
of
it.
18.2.25
For
a
theory
of
how
or
why
the
progress
between
stages
occurs,
we
must
look elsewhere. Any
theory
of
'1earning"
in
the
traditional
sense
will
be
useless
as
an
explanation because,
as
Fodor says,
"there
literally
isn't
such a
thing
as
. . .
learning
a conceptual
system
