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^"permissions":^"read":ӶӺ,"update":ӶӺ,"delete":ӶӺ,"admin":ӶӺ°,"user":^"id":6,"name":"Sarah Oberbichler"°,"id":"Yo8230gd3c","ranges":Ӷ^"start":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ18Ӻ","startOffset":0,"end":"/divӶ3Ӻ/divӶ4Ӻ/divӶ1Ӻ/pӶ23Ӻ","endOffset":672°Ӻ,"quote":"The process Locke characterized by saying, “whereby ideas taken from particular beings become general representations of all the same kind,” falls under Piaget’s term empirical abstraction. To isolate certain sensory properties of an experience and to maintain them as repeatable combinations, i.e., isolating what is needed to recognize further instantiations of, say, apples, undoubtedly constitutes an empirical abstraction. But, as I suggested earlier, to have composed a concept that can serve to recognize (assimilate) items as suitable triggers of a particular scheme, does not automatically bring with it the ability to visualize such items spontaneously as re- presentations. Piaget makes an analogous point—incidentally, one of the few places where he mentions an empiricist connection:\n\nBut it is one thing to extract a character, x, from a set of objects and to classify them together on this basis alone, a process which we shall refer to as ‘simple’ abstraction and generalisation (and which is invoked by classical empiricism), and quite another to recognise x in an object and to make use of it as an element of a different (non-perceptual) structure, a procedure which we shall refer to as ‘constructive’ abstraction and generalisation. (Piaget, 1969; p.317)\nThe capability of spontaneous re-presentation (which is “non-perceptual”, too) develops in parallel with the acquisition of language and may lead to an initial, albeit limited form of awareness. Children at the age of three or four years, are not incapable of producing some pertinent answer when they are asked what a familiar object is like or not like, even when the object is not in sight at the moment. This suggests that they are able not only to call forth an empirically abstracted re-presentation but also to review it quite deliberately. The notion of empirical abstraction covers a wider range of experience for Piaget than is envisioned in the passage I quoted from Locke. What Locke called “particular beings” were for him “ideas” supplied by the five senses. Because, in Piaget’s view, visual and tactual perception involve motion, it is not surprising that the internal sensations caused by the agent’s own motion (kinesthesis) belong to the “figurative” and are therefore, for him, raw material for empirical abstractions in the form of motor patterns.11 That such abstracted motor patterns reach the level where they can be re-presented, you can check for yourself. Anyone who has some proficiency in activities such as running down stairs, serving in Tennis, swinging for a drive in Golf, or skiing down a slope, has no difficulty in re-presenting the involved movements without stirring a muscle. An interesting aspect in such “dry reruns” of abstracted motor experiences is that they don’t require specific staircases, balls, or slopes. I mention this because it seems to me to be a clear demonstration of deliberate and therefore conscious re-presentation of something that needed no consciousness for its abstraction from actual experience. This difference is important also in Piaget’s subdivision of reflective abstractions to which we turn now. From empirical abstractions, whose raw material is sensory-motor experience, Piaget, as I said earlier, distinguished three types of reflective abstraction. Unfortunately, the French labels Piaget chose for them are such that they are inevitably confused by literal translation into English. The first “reflective” type derives from a process Piaget calls reflechissement, a word that is used in optics when something is being reflected, as for instance the sun’s rays on the face of the moon. In his theory of cognition, this term is used to indicate that an activity or mental operation (not a static combination of sensory elements) developed on one level is abstracted from that level of operating and applied to a higher one, where Piaget then considers it to be a reflechissement. (Moessinger & Poulin-Dubois, 1981, have translated this as “projection”, which captures something of the original sense.) But Piaget stresses that a second characteristic is required:\n\nReflective abstraction always involves two inseparable features: a “reflechissement” in the sense of the projection of something borrowed from a preceding level onto a higher one, and a “reflexion” in the sense of a (more or less conscious) cognitive reconstruction or reorganization of what has been transferred. (Piaget, 1975; p.41)\nAt the beginning of the first of his two volumes on reflective abstraction (Piaget et al. 1977), the two features are again mentioned:\n\nReflective abstraction, with its two components of “reflechissement” and “reflexion”, can be observed at all stages: from the sensory-motor levels on, the infant is able, in order to solve a new problem, to borrow certain coordinations from already constructed structures and to reorganize them in function of new givens. We do not know, in these cases whether the subject becomes aware of any part of this. (Piaget et al., 1977, Vol.I; p.6). \nIn the same passage he immediately goes on to describe the second type of reflective abstraction:\n\nIn contrast, at the later stages, when reflection is the work of thought, one must also distinguish thought as a process of construction and thought as a process of retroactive thematization. The latter becomes a reflecting on reflection; and in this case we shall speak of “abstraction reflechie” (reflected abstraction) or pensee reflexive (reflective thought).\nSince the present participle of the verb reflechir, from which both the nouns reflechissement and reflexion are formed, is reflechissante, Piaget used “abstraction reflechissante” as a generic term for both types. It is therefore not surprising that in most English translations the distinction was lost when the expression “reflective abstraction” was introduced as the standard term. The situation is further confounded by the fact that Piaget distinguished a third type of reflective abstraction which he called “pseudo-empirical”. When children are able to re-present certain things to themselves but are not yet fully on the level of concrete operations,\n\nit happens that the subjects, by leaning constantly on their perceivable results, can carry out certain constructions which, later on, become purely deductive (e.g. using an abacus or the like for the first numerical operations). In this case we shall speak of “pseudo-empirical abstraction” because, in spite of the fact that these results are read off material objects as though they were empirical abstractions, the perceived properties are actually introduced into these objects by the subject’s activities. (Piaget, et al., 1977; Vol.I, p.6).\nTo recapitulate, Piaget distinguishes four kinds of abstraction. One is called “empirical” because it abstracts sensory-motor properties from experiential situations. The first of the three “reflective” ones, projects and reorganizes on another level a coordination or pattern of the subject’s own activities or operations. The next is similar in that it also involves patterns of activities or operations, but it includes the subject’s awareness of what has been abstracted and is therefore called “reflected abstraction”. The last is called “pseudo-empirical” because, like empirical abstractions, it can take place only if suitable sensory-motor material is available.","highlights":Ӷ^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°,^"jQuery3210023416141222439182":^°°Ӻ,"text":"","order":"mw-content-text","category":"WissenschaftlicheReferenz2","data_creacio":1560435411569°
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