psychology-of-intelligence.mdwn

[[!meta title="The Psychology of Intelligence"]]

* Author: Jean Piaget

## Overview

This overview is a mixed of both ideas from the book altogether with other
considerations I've got by reading other, related material:

### Intelligence is reversible!

As what's really wonderful about this reversibility is that it's built atop of
lower, fundamental levels of irreversible dynamical systems.

That revesibility is the capacity to the adaptive system do turn away from
configurations that doesn't lead to a defined goal and replace by other
pathways, mixing introspection and empirism.

Reading this book along with The Tree of Live from Maturana and Varella
and Morin's Method I get the feeling that intelligence in life arises from
the sensori-motor system and gets deeper in a process where the nervous
system inflates to give way to impulses/stimuli that originates from itself.

Consequential to this reversibility is that intelligence might experimentation
freely without risking itself producing damages or permanent harm to itself,
which is different to say that somebody can't harm him/herself by the consequence
of his/her acts.

Also, while what happens with intelligence looks entirely reversible, mind is
not composed of intelligence alone. Other instances exist that might put the
whole apparatus on restricted modes of operation, such when in a neurosis which
is a state of constant looping in a given theme.

## Logic and psychology

    An axiomatics is an exclusively hypothetico-deductive sci-
    ence, i.e., it reduces to a minimum appeals to experience (it even
    aims to eliminate them entirely) in order freely to reconstruct its
    object by means of undemonstrable propositions (axioms),
    which are to be combined as rigorously as possible and in every
    possible way. In this way geometry has made great progress,
    seeking to liberate itself from all intuition and constructing the
    most diverse spaces simply by defining the primary elements to
    be admitted by hypothesis and the operations to which they are
    subject. The axiomatic method is thus the mathematical method
    par excellence and it has had numerous applications, not only in
    pure mathematics, but in various fields of applied mathematics
    (from theoretical physics to mathematical economics). The use-
    fulness of an axiomatics, in fact, goes beyond that of demonstra-
    tion (although in this field it constitutes the only rigorous
    method); in the face of complex realities, resisting exhaustive
    analysis, it permits us to construct simplified models of reality
    and thus provides the study of the latter with irreplaceable dis-
    secting instruments. To sum up, an axiomatics constitutes a “pat-
    tern” for reality, as F. Gonseth has clearly shown, and, since all
    abstraction leads to a schematization, the axiomatic method in
    the long run extends the scope of intelligence itself.

    But precisely because of its “schematic” character, an axiomat-
    ics cannot claim to be the basis of, and still less to replace, its
    corresponding experimental science, i.e. the science relating to
    that sector of reality for which the axiomatics forms the pattern.
    Thus, axiomatic geometry is incapable of teaching us what the
    space of the real world is like (and “pure economics” in no way
    exhausts the complexity of concrete economic facts). No axi-
    omatics could replace the inductive science which corresponds
    to it, for the essential reason that its own purity is merely a limit
    which is never completely attained. As Gonseth also says, there
    always remains an intuitive residue in the most purified pattern
    (just as there is already an element of schematization in all intu-
    ition). This reason alone is enough to show why an axiomatics
    will never be the basis of an experimental science and why there
    is an experimental science corresponding to every axiomatics
    (and, no doubt, vice versa).

    -- page 30

    It is true that in addition to the individual consistency of
    actions there enter into thought interactions of a collective order
    and consequently “norms” imposed by this collaboration. But
    co-operation is only a system of actions, or of operations, car-
    ried out in concert, and we may repeat the preceding argument
    for collective symbolic behaviour, which likewise remains at a
    level containing real structures, unlike axiomatizations of a
    formal nature.

    For psychology, therefore, there remains unaltered the prob-
    lem of understanding the mechanism with which intelligence
    comes to construct coherent structures capable of operational
    combination; and it is no use invoking “principles” which this
    intelligence is supposed to apply spontaneously, since logical
    principles concern the theoretical pattern formulated after
    thought has been constructed and not this living process of con-
    struction itself. Brunschvicg has made the profound observation
    that intelligence wins battles or indulges, like poetry, in a con-
    tinuous work of creation, while logico-mathematical deduction
    is comparable only to treatises on strategy and to manuals of
    “poetic art”, which codify the past victories of action or mind
    but do not ensure their future conquests. 1

    -- page 34

## Habit and sensori-motor intelligence

Circular reaction:

    Let us imagine an infant in a cradle with a raised cover from which
    hang a whole series of rattles and a loose string. The child grasps
    this and so shakes the whole arrangement without expecting to do
    so or understanding any of the detailed spatial or causal rela-
    tions. Surprised by the result, he reaches for the string and
    carries out the whole sequence several times over. J. M. Baldwin
    called this active reproduction of a result at first obtained by
    chance a “circular reaction”. The circular reaction is thus a typ-
    ical example of reproductive assimilation. The first movement
    executed and followed by its result constitutes a complete action,
    which creates a new need once the objects to which it relates
    have returned to their initial stage; these are then assimilated to
    the previous action (thereby promoted to the status of a schema)
    which stimulates its reproduction, and so on. Now this mechan-
    ism is identical with that which is already present at the source
    of elementary habits except that, in their case, the circular reac-
    tion affects the body itself (so we will give the name “primary
    circular reaction” to that of the early level, such as the schema of
    thumb-sucking), whereas thenceforward, thanks to prehension,
    it is applied to external objects (we will call this behaviour affect-
    ing objects the “secondary circular reaction,” although we must
    remember that these are not yet by any means conceived as
    substances by the child).

    -- 110-112

Early intelligence:

    The routes between the subject and the object fol-
    lowed by action, and also by sensori-motor reconstitutions and
    anticipations, are no longer direct and simple pathways as at the
    previous stages: rectilinear as in perception, or stereotyped and
    uni-directional as in circular reactions. The routes begin to vary
    and the utilisation of earlier schemata begins to extend further in
    time. This is characteristic of the connection between means and
    ends, which henceforth are differentiated, and this is why we
    may begin to speak of true intelligence. But, apart from the
    continuity that links it with earlier behaviour, we should note the
    limitations of this early intelligence: there are no inventions or
    discoveries of new means, but simply application of known
    means to unforeseen circumstances.

    -- 114

Innovation:

    Two acquisitions characterise the next stage, both relating to
    the utilisation of past experience. The assimilatory schemata so
    far described are of course continually accommodated to
    external data. But this accommodation is, so to speak, suffered
    rather than sought; the subject acts according to his needs and
    this action either harmonizes with reality or encounters resist-
    ances which it tries to overcome. Innovations which arise for-
    tuitously are either neglected or else assimilated to previous
    schemata and reproduced by circular reaction. However, a time
    comes when the innovation has an interest of its own, and this
    certainly implies a sufficient stock of schemata for comparisons
    to be possible and for the new fact to be sufficiently like the
    known one to be interesting and sufficiently different to avoid
    satiation. Circular reaction, then, will consist of a reproduction
    of the new phenomenon, but with variations and active
    experimentation that are intended precisely to extract from it its
    new possibilities.

    -- 114