From Piaget's Epistemic Subject to Pascual‐Leone's Metasubject: Epistemic Transition in the Constructivist—Rationalist Theory of Cognitive Development

Abstract

The explanation of the transition from one epistemic theory to another is an important part of Piaget's genetic epistemology. It is argued that this epistemic transition leads to a retrodictable orthogenetic tendency toward optimizing equilibration. The objective of this paper is to establish a relationship between Piaget's epistemic subject and Pascual‐Leone's metasubject and to demonstrate that the postulation of the latter can be considered as an epistemic transition between two constructivist—rationalist theories, which leads to the development of a theory with greater explanatory power. Epistemic transition in this paper refers to a progressive problemshift (cf. Lakatos, 1970), between the theories of Piaget and Pascual‐Leone. Piaget builds a “general model” by neglecting individual differences, that is, studies the epistemic subject, whereas Pascual‐Leone by incorporating a framework for individual difference variables, studies the metasubject—the psychological organization of the epistemic subject. Empirical evidence is presented to demonstrate that Pascual‐Leone's theory of constructive operators is a model of the psychological organism (the metasubject), which is at work inside Piaget's epistemic subject. Finally, it is concluded that the greater explanatory power of Pascual‐Leone's theory can be interpreted as an epistemic transition between Piaget's epistemic subject and Pascual‐Leone's metasubject.