The Social Economy – Analogue of Piaget's Development of Knowledge

Abstract

This essay belongs to the large group of studies of the aggregation problem having the general aim of finding how the group, regarded as an entity, should go about constructing an opinion from its members' opinions. The present work studies the transformation of opinions to knowledge or, economically speaking, the transformation of presumed private economic means into real social assets and their structure in justice under the condition of irreversibility of events. It is the purpose of this paper to show that progress can be made in this area by consider? ing the development of wealth in analogy to Jean Piaget's work on the development of knowledge. Piaget [1970a, 1970b, 1973, 1977, 1978 and Bringuier], the eminent child psychologist, showed that the development of knowledge of the child is isomorphic with the development of scientific knowledge in all fields. His conclusion in this genetic epistemology is that the various kinds of knowledge are differentiated organs of regulation of functional exchanges with the external world. Each piece of knowledge is an asset, a parcel of human capital, in the development or transformation of the person and of the world. These knowledge groups are cohesive, that is, they can circulate in transformation interpersonally from mind to mind, as well as in exchange for external assets independently of psy? chological and cultural conditions. Piaget's epistemology is limited. He is not concerned with affectivity except to recognize it as a motor in gaining new knowledge; nor does he include in his study the knowledge associated with the theological vir? tues of faith, hope and love. Nonetheless, by his ingenious method of isolating children's ways of reasoning, he found that they learn by inventing structures of thought. These increase in complexity as the child grows older and more experienced. In this manner, successive knowledge structures are invented, accounting for the permanence of objects, of space, time, causality and other features of reality. These reasoning structures are not Kantian-like categories, given in the beginning, once and for all, but are rather the developmental results of the interplay of the exterior world and the child's action in an inno? vating process. The structures are always systems of transformation and simultaneously the locus whence the next type of transformation begins.