I'm much more interested now than I was back freshman year in the philosophy of language and communication. Not that I am that well-versed now, beyond the literary theory I got into for a time both for teaching literature and thinking about Tanakh (Bible). In that light, I'm noticing in my notes about Piaget where he pulled up short of his project of using cognitive development as a window into what "knowing" is. Some critics have said that he didn't account for language, and I think this means two things. One is that he didn't apply his own very rich and texture stage and substage concepts to the experience of language itself. Language was just one part of the evidence of how a person thinks, not a (semi-?)unique realm of experience in itself. Also he didn't take a stand on whether language drives cognitive development or vice versa, whether language shapes cognition. The notes say that Piaget remained committed to the idea that thought is a motivation for behavior. People think in order to restore themselves to equilibrium, and in that sense development is furthered by a human need for one's cognitions about the self and the world to make sense. On the other hand, at least one critic pointed to adolescence as a period when thought is itself enlisted in service of being more self-centered and in that sense less "formal" than Piaget, or Kohlberg after him, would posit.
Still, what delights me about Piaget is what he did observe, the texture he did provide about one aspect of development. That's much more to me than what he didn't explain or couldn't coherently encompass within his theory.
I read over a couple lectures about the Soviet developmental psychologists, and the project is interesting even if the psychology itself less so. I think this was my first encounter with the notion that there is no real objective standpoing from which to do science. So the Soviets made that a virtue, and adopted Marxist goals -- the new socialist man, a whole and inner-driven ciitzen -- and Marxian analysis -- ideas like the dialectic, meaning sudden change within the individual on the analogy of Marxian class revolution, when the current psychological equilibrium could not hold for a person. There seems to be some belief in social engineering, the ability of a socialist society to help a person grow toward a normative goal, rather than a universal human maturation pattern. I think in some cases, the Soviet psychologists were more humanistic or at least more humane than the Soviet intellectual system as a whole.
With this the course is going to turn away from organizing theories, to stages of life. I really loved at the time how Professor Demick structured the class -- giving us the best of theory and the best of empirical work.