In this post we’ll continue our investigation of the developmental process, looking at cognitive development. Cognitive development is one of the most important, if not the most important, line of development. Why? Because many theorists and researchers believe it is necessary (though not sufficient) for development in all the other areas. Unless you can be aware of something (which is what cognition is all about) you can’t be moral about it, feel something about it, create art about it, develop faith around it, organize a self around it, or develop in any other way regarding it.
The great pioneer in cognitive development is Jean Piaget, and I will draw heavily from his work in this post, with additional help from Ken Wilber, and also from Dr. C. George Boeree.
This is a pretty big topic, and I have a lot to share with you, so I’m going to split this into three posts. Part one will cover the first two levels of cognitive development as defined by Piaget. The second post, which will come a few days later, will cover the next two. Then in another post I’ll cover the current thinking about cognitive development beyond Piaget’s stages. I think you will find this information to be particularly fascinating, so let’s get started…
Cognitive development refers to our ability to perform various types of operations on what we encounter in the world and in our awareness. To live in the world, accomplish various things, and deal with the challenge of being human, we first learn to ”work with” (deal with, manage, get things done with) our body, then with objects, then with symbols, concepts, and ideas, and–if development continues to the highest transpersonal or transrational levels of development–we eventually add ways of dealing with life that are beyond the realm of ideas.
Always keep in mind that these developmental levels (which, remember, are perspectives) are ways we make sense of what it means to be a human being living in a complex and often paradoxical world. As our environment changes, and as we change, our way of responding to the world and making sense of it changes.
Piaget’s work on development is particularly important because it has been closely scrutinized over three decades of cross-cultural research. As a result, Piaget’s basic levels of cognitive development (sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational) are considered to be universally applicable to all human cultures.
Other researchers have taken Piaget’s work further, describing levels of cognitive development beyond his highest level, formal operational. We’ll look at these more advanced stages (generally referred to as transrational or transpersonal) after I describe Piaget’s basic levels.
As you’ll see, Piaget’s levels of cognitive development correspond roughly to those I’ve described so far in previous posts (if you haven’t read those posts, it might be helpful if do so). The stage I’ve described as preconventional roughly corresponds to Piaget’s preoperational level, conventional roughly corresponds to Piaget’s concrete operational, and post-conventional roughly corresponds to formal-operational. What this really means is that preconventional people use preoperational cognition to deal with the world, conventional level people use concrete operational cognition to deal with the world, and postconventional people use formal operational cognition to deal with the world.
Sensorimotor, Piaget’s first stage (the stage before preoperational), is sometimes referred to as archaic in other naming conventions (in this case, in that of Jean Gebser).
As I said in an earlier post, different naming schemes are used by different scholars and researchers, depending on which line of development (cognitive, moral, ego, emotional, etc.) is being studied. This is partly because these researchers were often working independently, without knowing much if anything about each other’s work, each creating his or her own terminology. Ken Wilber, to his credit, has pulled together many of these different developmental approaches and has pointed out the many parallels between them.
Over time we’ll visit a number of different developmental approaches, and hopefully you’ll begin to get a feeling for the different names and how they correspond to each other. These different naming protocols can be a bit confusing at first (I know it took me a while to sort them all out). I’m hoping that I’ll be able to describe them in a way that makes it easier for you to make sense of them.
Remember that with all these developmental schemes each person begins with the first level and must develop through each level, in order. This is because each level builds on the previous level–each new level transcends the previous level in certain ways (it creatively introduces new ways of cognizing the world), but also includes key aspects of the previous level.
To use an example from the physical world, atoms represent one level of physical organization. Molecules, the next higher level, include atoms, but also transcend them (molecules can do things atoms cannot do–they operate in the world in way that transcends the way atoms operate in the world, while at the same time including them).
The point I’m making is that atoms had to come into existence before molecules could exist, since atoms are a building block of every molecule. In the same way, each developmental level (each new perspective) in humans is necessary to the development of the next perspective. This is why everyone must begin at the beginning and go through the levels in order.
Not every person moves through all the levels, however (just as not every person moves from kindergarden all the way through grade school, high school, college, and graduate school). Some people move through a few developmental levels and then stop, while a smaller number move to the highest levels. This depends on the person, their environment and its demands, the developmental center of gravity of their culture, and other influences. The higher the level, the fewer people will reach it. For instance, fewer individuals in any culture reach Piaget’s highest level, formal operations, or formop, and even fewer reach the transpersonal levels beyond that.
Having made those introductory remarks, let’s move on. Piaget divided cognitive development into four broad stages: 1) sensorimotor (0-2 years), 2) preoperational, or “preop” (2-7 years), concrete operational, or “conop” (7-11 years), and formal operational, or “formop” (11 years onward). Each of these can be divided into several substages. The ages are averages, and since a person could stop and remain at any level, you can find many adults at each level (though not many are found at the sensorimotor stage).
In this discussion I’ll also use some of the stage names used by Jean Gebser and Ken Wilber: archaic (similar to sensorimotor), magic (similar to early preoperational), magic-mythic (late preoperational), mythic (early concrete operational), mythic-rational (late concrete operational), and rational (formal operational). This is just to confuse you, of course.
In the sensorimotor stage, the infant uses senses and motor abilities to understand the world, beginning at first with reflexes and eventually using complex combinations of sensorimotor skills. At the beginning of this stage, the infant cannot yet distinguish itself from its environment (what some have called an experience of oceanic oneness). This has also been called a state of “primary narcissism,” because the infant is embedded in or undifferentiated from the environment.
[A quick aside: You may remember from previous posts that all development is a process of immersion in something, followed (hopefully) by eventual development of the ability to observe it, i.e., to see it from a wider perspective. We are what we are immersed in; we are so caught in it that we are unconscious of it, unaware of it--like a fish in water. And, because we're unaware of whatever we're immersed in, we have no conscious control over it.
Once we develop the ability to step back and observe that which we've been immersed in (in other words, once we begin to be aware of it), we shift from being it to having it. Being aware of it, we have more control, more choice. This is the true meaning of expanded spiritual awareness.
You can be your body or, in becoming aware of it, you can have a body. You can be your emotions or, in become aware of them, you can have them. You can be your thoughts and other mental processes or, in becoming aware of them, you can have them. You can be your idea of who you are or, in becoming aware of it, you can have an idea of who you are. In each case, having it gives you some amount of intentional control, whether of your body, your emotions, your mind, or your sense of who you are.
You could also say that what we are immersed in is subject (in other words, it's me--part of who I am), while what we can observe becomes object (something I have). The developmental process, then, is one in which more and more of what you have been immersed in ("subject") becomes something you can observe, and therefore have ("object"). What you have you can intentionally use and control.]
Okay, back to Piaget. Between four and nine months of age, the infant–who has been immersed in his entire enviroment–finally differentiates itself from this environment. He moves from being the environment to having it. The infant bites his thumb and it hurts; it bites it’s rattle, and it doesn’t hurt, and in doing so he learns the difference between self and environment. At this stage, the infant’s only contact with it’s environment is here and now, in the moment, experienced through his sensory and motor abilities (hence the name of this stage, sensorimotor). As of yet there are no true emotions, nor any thoughts.
During this period it is said that ”consciousness seats itself in the physical body.” If some sort of trauma interfers with this process, the result is psychosis (lasting beyond infancy and generally into adulthood). Without a grounded physical self that is clearly differentiated from the environment, the psychotic is constantly “jumping out of the body,” as Scottish psychiatrist R.D. Laing put it. He cannot clearly tell where his body stops and the environment begins, creating a hallucinatory blurring of subject-object boundaries.
A healthy sensorimotor stage, then, is one of differentiating self from environment, and ends with the infant 1) knowing the difference between self and other, 2) understanding that physical objects exist independently of himself, and 3) being able to manipulate physical objects in many different but rudimentary ways.
This manipulation begins with simple reflexes, such as sucking and grasping; moves to such things as opening and closing the fingers repetitively; then to actions designed to produce a certain interesting consequence, such as kicking one’s feet to move a mobile suspended over a crib; to more complex tasks such as reaching behind a screen to obtain a hidden object; the discovery of novel ways to achieve a goal, such as pulling a pillow toward oneself in order to get a toy resting on it; and finally to rudimentary symbolic thinking in which the solution of a problem is symbolized internally before taking action.
As the beginnings of mental life (as opposed to merely sensory and physical engagement) emerge at the end of the sensorimotor period, the infant begins to create mental images. Initially the infant confuses these images with the outer world–another example of immersion. This confusion is one reason for the strong magical thinking of the next (preoperational) stage. This is created by an inability to differentiate one’s own mental imagery and symbology from the external objects they represent. As a result, mental imagery and certain actions seem to cause things when they are actually merely linked in other, non-causative, ways (they happen at the same time, for instance, or happen in the same place, but aren’t really linked by causation).
Thus at the end of the sensorimotor stage–and into the preoperational stage–the child believes, for instance, that the sun or moon “follows him” as he walks or rides in a car (I noticed this during the recent full moon–Denise and I went downtown for dinner, and the moon followed us the whole way). When a child is asked which child the moon will follow when two children are traveling in different directions, he finds the question confusing, as if he’d never considered such a possibility. His perspective does not yet include the awareness that other people experience things in a different way than he does, i.e., that there are other points of view. He cannot yet take the perspective of another.
From the child’s point of view, things notice him and tend to obey him–the wind, the clouds, the night, and so forth. Or, the child experiences a type of animism in which he endows things with consciousness and life (one oriented solely toward him). Another type of magical thinking involves thinking that the things around him are made for him: the grass is there so he won’t get hurt when he falls, for instance.
These points of view are all based on a type of egocentrism, an inability to transcend one’s own perspective and take that of another. The child takes his or her immediate perceptions to be true and interprets them according to his own egocentric concerns, without realizing that others have a different point of view. In other words, the child is immersed in his own perspective.
At this late sensorimotor stage the child may, for instance, hold a picture so that he alone can see it while assuming that because he can see it, others can see it, too. Or, he covers his eyes and assumes that since he can’t see others, they can’t see him. If someone hides a toy while he watches, and another child then enters the room, the child, because he knows where the toy is hidden, assumes that the second child also knows where it is.
As the child moves from sensorimotor to preoperational (and later to the edge of the concrete operational stage), such magical beliefs gradually disappear because 1) the child begins to to see that other viewpoints exist and 2) he gains the ability to adopt these other points of view. As this happens, egocentric (magical) logic is replaced with a more rational logic developed through concrete interactions with the world and other people.
Piaget described the sensorimotor and early preoperational stages as being that of “magical cognitions”: “To every desire corresponds immeditately an image or illusion which transforms this desire into reality, thanks to a sort of pseudo-hallucination or play. No objective observation or reasoning is possible.” By “objective” Piaget refers to the ability to take the perspective of another, to step out of that which one is immersed in. This objectivity also refers to the ability to “have it” rather than just “be it”–to make what was subject into object.
In the preoperational stage, the child increasingly uses verbal representations, but speech is egocentric (two children at this stage may talk while playing, but what they say is never in response to what the other has said). As the child masters language, play begins to involve this new ability to use symbolic thinking (rather than relating to the world solely through sensorimotor play). For example, the child can think about something without the object being actually present. A picture of a dog or the word “dog” can represent a real dog. Or, objects can represent something else: checkers can become cookies, leaves can be dishes, a box can be a table.
Using this new tool, symbolic thinking (the ability to make mental images which represent real things), the child begins to develop an understanding of past and future. If the child is told that something desirable will happen soon, he may stop crying. If he is reminded of the time he fell down he may make a sad face.
At about four years of age, speech becomes more social and less egocentric, and the child begins to grasp logical concepts in some areas. There is a tendency, however, to focus on one aspect of an object at the expense of others. If you tell the child, ”Your father is my brother,” they will not understand the two separate aspects that make up the relationship. Or, the child may say, “I don’t live in America, I live in Oregon,” not understanding that one thing can be a part of another. If you show the child five black marbles and three white ones, and ask, “Are there more marbles, or more black marbles,” he will answer, “More black marbles.” Each of these examples involve understanding and holding in awareness two different, but connected, relationships or ways of categorizing that are beyond the child’s cognitive abilities at this point.
Another result of this inability to focus on and hold in awareness different types of relationships or ways of categorizing is a preoperational belief in magical increase, decrease, or disappearance. If you pour juice into a tall, skinny glass, and then transfer the juice to a short, fat glass, the child (focusing on just one aspect of the glasses) will assume the taller glass contained more liquid. Reality is not yet firm, and immediate perception (rather than logic) dominates judgement. This ability to to see and hold in awareness more than one aspect of a situation or compare more than one way of categorizing is called decentering and is mastered in the next (concrete operational) stage.
In terms of morality, the preoperational child is unable to organize his behavior around principles of what is right or wrong. If he is caught and punished for something, it’s wrong. If not, it isn’t. What constitutes right and wrong comes from an authority figure, not from any particular principles that might be carried forward to other situations.
As the child differentiates himself from his environment, he develops a grounded emotional self. His emotional self, however, still is indissociated from the emotional selves of others, particularly that of his mother. At about 18 months, however, the child learns to differentiate his feelings from those of others. This is termed the “separation-individuation phase,” where the child creates a stable emotional self. This is also referred to as the “psychological birth” of the child, because the child emerges from emotional fusion with the mother. As before, what the child was immersed in (in this case, emotionally), he now has. Once again, what was subject has become object.
If the child is traumatized during this shift, clinical narcissism or borderline pathologies can result. In such pathologies the child is open to being “flooded” and “swept away” by his emotional environment (the borderline disorders) or he treats the entire world as an extension of his own feelings (the narcissistic disorders). In both, the child (and later, the adult) remains merged with or stuck in his emotions.
By age three, if things have gone well, the child has a stable physical and emotional self. Language has begun to emerge, and with it the beginning development of the mental self, some aspects of which I have already described (the use of symbols to represent things).
The first layer of emotional development (at the preoperational stage) is magical. The newly emerging images and symbols don’t merely represent objects, but rather are thought of as being actual parts of the things they represent. This form of magical thinking happens in a few different ways. One happens when two things are linked because they are similar in some way. If one dog is bad, all dogs are bad.
Or, two things are linked because they are connected by being contiguous with each other: daddy’s car keys, his hairbrush, or other personal items contain daddy’s power (I remember feeling this way when I handled items belonging to adults when I was a little boy). Or, in preconventional/preoperational tribal societies, a lock of a warriors hair contains his strength, or eating the heart of a lion gives one courage. This sort of magical thinking explains the preconventional attraction to talismans such as an eagle’s feather, religious icons such as crosses, statues of the Buddha, or other religious iconography, four leaf clovers, rabbit’s feet, medicine bags, etc., etc. (And, yes, many conventional, postconventional, and even integral or transcendent-level people keep such things–including me–but they don’t REALLY believe that they are magical.)
In this kind of magical thinking, two objects are seen as having something in common which enables them to act upon one another at a distance, or a thing is in some way an emanation of, affected by, or caused by, another. Piaget found that children often “reason” in the following way: the book makes a shadow; trees and houses make shadows. Therefore, the book’s shadow comes from the trees and houses also.
The idea that one object can magically alter another changes during the preoperational period. Interaction with the world eventually leads the child to realize that his thoughts alone do not egocentrically control or create the world (if there is trauma at this stage, however, magical thinking can continue as an ongoing pathology). The child eventually finds that the linkages I mentioned above, where something affects something else because it is similar, or because it is physically connected or contiguous, don’t hold up in reality.
As the child’s view that the he has magical powers over the world diminishes, however, that power is transfered to others. The child may not be able to order the world around, but Daddy can, or God can. Gods or goddesses–or whatever the human equivalent might be to a child–are able to miraculously alter the patterns of nature in order to cater to the child’s wants.
This perspective (which, though still magical, is a developmental advance over the previous perspective) is often referred to as mythic. A magical element still exists, but at the mythic level the power to alter the world has been transfered to others. Previously, in the magical stages proper, the secret was to learn the right type of word-magic in order to directly alter the world. Now the focus shifts to knowing the right rituals or prayers that will make the gods and godesses intervene and alter the world for the child.
In the New Age movement we see a lot of this–in the various types of “channeled beings,” for instance, and in what has been called “putting it out to the universe,” which is really just a form of asking “the gods” (or some similar powerful substitute) to give the beseeker what he or she want. In another post I discussed miracles attributed to Yogananda and other Eastern saints. These, too, are examples of this magical-mythic perspective, where “great others” are accorded powers beyond that of normal mortals.
(And, by the way, when I use the word “powers” in this situation, I mean magic powers, in which the laws of nature are supposedly suspended, as opposed to what I would consider to be non-magical powers (for instance, the ability to solve differential equations, or be incredibly persuasive, or intuitively diagnose a therapy client, or manage a large organization, or create a work of art, or create a spell-binding story, or flawlessly fly an airplane, or be a virtuoso musician–or even the power to access transcendent, enlightened states of awareness). These definitely are powers, but without involving what Piaget–or I–would consider “magic” in the sense that the laws of nature are supposedly suspended.)
The miracles of Jesus would also fall into this category. From this mythic perspective, the laws of nature can be suspended by a powerful other. A confusion, in effect, still exists between physical and personal causality.
It is from this stage that most of the world’s classical mythologies come. At this stage children (about age 6) have already developed elaborate mythologies about cosmic questions such as the nature of life and death, the cause of the wind, why the sun shines, where babies come from, and so forth.
There are still problems at this stage in taking the role of other, but the nature of this problem changes (the problem remains, but its form changes). As the mythic point of view replaces the magical point of view (powerful others are magical rather than I am magical) there is a shift from a purely egocentric position to an ethnocentric, or group-centric position (culminating in the concrete operational stage, which we will visit later).
This is a shift from “it’s all about me” to “it’s all about my group.” The previous magical “me” stage is organized around blood ties and family (societies at this stage were organized into clans based on family ties). At the mythic stage, the group is organized around ideas. People at this stage band together because they share the same myths, and the unit of social organization moves from the clan to the tribe. For a child, the center of his world moves from his immediate family to his age-related peer group at school. The child is now better able to take the role of other, because he needs to do so to become a member of the group. His ability to do so, however, is limited in the sense that he can only see the perspective of others who share the same myth.
This continuing difficulty in taking the role of other at the late preoperational (”magic-mythic”) stage stems in part from a difficulty in differentiating the physical world, on one hand, from the symbols and names used to represent it. Even in late preoperational thinking the child still believes that names are a part of, or even exist in, the object being named. “Names are what you see when you look at things,” a child of five once said to Piaget. When asked, “Where is the name of the sun?” the answer was, “Inside the sun.”
Though most adults would not say such things, adult magical-mythical thinkers still confuse the physical world with the symbols and maps that represent it. (Interestingly enough, one of the key insights to spiritual enlightenment is the realization that “the map is not the territory”–that our ideas of the world and who we are, our map of reality and our idea of who we are, are easily confused with the real thing, and the ability to tell the difference creates a huge shift in perception).
This confusion of the map with the territory continues to exist through several more developmental stages, but the nature of the confusion changes with each new perspective. One change we’ve already seen is the change from “I am magical” to “Powerful others are magical.” We’ll follow this shift as we look at each new perspective.
Each new level involves a progressively greater ability to differentiate self from other, and to do so in continuingly more sophisticated ways. At this late preoperational stage (magic-mythic), the use of language to represent the world is the main tool used to differentiate the mind from the body–in other words, to differentiate the child’s new ability to have mental intentions from mere bodily impulses.
As I said above, the failure to differentiate body and mind–being stuck in the body (being it rather than having it)–results in narcissistic or borderline disorders, which pretty much always continue into adulthood. Another potential pathology at this stage (if certain traumas happen) is at the opposite end of the spectrum. If, instead of a failure to differentiate mind from body, there is too much differentiation, it can lead to dissociation from the body. Instead of transcending and including the body (the healthy form of the developmental shift at this point), aspects of the body are repressed (for instance, sensuality and emotional-sexual feelings).
This repression creates neurosis. Repressed physical urges return in a disguised form, called neurotic symptoms: anxieties, depression, obsessions, etc. Healing of these symptoms happens only as the repression is relaxed and the person recontacts and befriends the body and all its impulses and urges. Being stuck in the body (being it rather than having it), then, results in narcissistic or borderline disorders, and repressing the body results in neurosis.
(By the way, just as an aside, a general rule about developmental pathologies: the earlier the trauma, the more difficult it is to heal–psychosis is more difficult to heal than are narcissism and borderline disorders, which are more difficult to heal than neurosis, which is more difficult to heal than still later traumas).
But assuming that all goes well, the child moves to the next stage, the concrete operational stage, or conop. In children this stage generally lasts from about age 7 to 11 (many adults, of course, stop at this stage, staying in it throughout life). In my next post, we’ll look at concrete operations, the stage of most people in the Western world, and then at Piaget’s highest stage, formal operational. Then, in a third post, we’ll look at the stages many thinkers and researchers have found (or are postualating) beyond formal operational.
As always, be well.
I find myself very much in agreement with everything that Stephen Carter said. Your promulgation of the Piaget system of psychology highlights the modern mania with labeling everything and assuming that by so doing you’ve automatically ‘understood’ it. I’m tempted to say that you should get into the writings of David R. Hawkins who points out the ultimate aridity of all purely intellection-based viewpoints but that would involve interfering in the free will of another and these days I hope that I’m no longer that naive; the general thrust of everything you’re saying here is ultimately in a direction that reaffirms and consolidates the ego of the individual but ultimately the return to God or experience of mystical matters requires that one move in exactly the opposite direction, one that systematically de-constructs the ego!
Everything you say sounds very plausible but I’m convinced that the entire tenor of it is to push people in a direction that is probably 180 degrees the opposite of what will ultimately serve their highest good.
But I will read the other articles that you’ve posted in this series anyway!
Why be human if you can’t be perverse sometimes?
Bill,
I enjoyed reading your thoughts on that. I tend to take what is on the written page as fact. Ver batem. This is pretty typical with my life in this world. It was so interesting where you wrote: “cannot clearly tell where his body stops and the environment begins, creating a hallucinatory blurring of subject-object boundaries.”. I have described this to therapists time and time again. No one understands. My mind litterally feels like it supports my body… controls it. It is separate from my body physically. All of my movements are almost consciously controlled. This has resulted in my having… faulty muscle recruitement patterns and as a result pain in many joints in my body. I also have the physcosis to go along with it. Anxiety, depression, dissociation, no real sense of self apart from the environment… etc. It has been termed “sensory integration disorder”, “layered muscle imbalance”, “complex PTSD”… etc. I lived, and as a result have this stuff in me still, in a traumatic environment from the womb basically. Father always yelling and then beating me when I was old enough for him to justify it in his own mind. So it wasn’t safe for me to move without thinking about it, because it wasn’t safe for me to leave my mind out of fear. I was always watching my environment very closely… became it. It made me a very good athlete. But as an adult, the psychological manifestations that were hidden but inevitable to birth, manifested themselves. I am on Awakening Level I, just starting CD 2 with affirmations. But I recorded so many affirmations at such a high rate of speed… i don’t know if they will be effective. I would appreciate any advice that you can give.
Thanks so much for this article. I have personal experience of what you are saying. I am not a doctor and dont’ have a degree in development from a psychosematic level. But my thoughts on my own development parallel, sometimes shockingly close, to what you are describing. But then again, they are only thoughts. And I am prone to projecting my thoughts onto my view of the world.
Any thoughts you have would be very much appreciated. I dont’ have the money to go to the expensive retreats. I am already doing a movment science recently developed by Eric Cobb called Z-health. I still can’t get past my body. Anyway… I’ll end there.
Thanks in advance Bill.
Sincerely and in peace (as much as my mind can muster),
Billy
Thank you so much for the podcast. Now I can concentrate when I listen to you and I can listen several times to fully digest what you say. It doesn’t matter if I agree or disagree, I studied Piaget and others in Developmental Psychology and Linguistics,( I teach English in Greece) and I often didn’t agree, but l always learned something.
With what you write and the podcast, I feel I’m back in the classroom and I LOVE it. Thank you so much.
Kathleen
Bill,
Your blog is getting better all the time, and podcasting now. Im going to download the mp3 and listen on the road.
Hi Bill
Much love to you and yours. I hear that question a lot lately. How well do you know yourself? I can say with complete honesty, that I know my self better now than I ever have. Holosync has changed my life and I wish with all my heart I could see you and say that so don’t be suprised if I get what I wish for, it’s been happening a lot lately. Holosync has opened a whole new world for me. It came not like a bolt out of the blue, but soft gentle as a lovers first kiss. The first thing I learned is Resistance (the ego) is suffering. Acceptance Causes a shift in awarness of the connectedness of the whole. If I hurt someone I hurt myself, If I hate someone I hate myself. If I cause strife I will have strife. If i give love I will be loved. The biggest thing I have learned about myself is that I have to actually want what I wanted when I get it. Every day is another chance to be filled with a joy that is beyond my limited education to define. I would like to see you make a movie one day that shows how to do some of the things are done. I am a visual person. I would like for the whole world to see to feel. There has to be some way. Well I am going now. I finally have started that garden in the back yard of that beautiful home I always dreamed of but until I stopped resisting It came. The best to you and yours.
Bill,
Regarding the sensorimotor stage which you say is roughly between ages 0-2: How would you explain children who are taught, sometimes at day-care centers to use sign language even before they are 1 year old or before they can speak. I’ve seen children indicate through signing such abstract concepts as “more” before the age of 1. Does this mean that we need to update what is going on at these early ages that hasn’t in the past been expressed by children and what it obviously possible for these very young children? I recently heard that children before the age of 1 are not just lying there doing nothing, they are very busy constructing language…now that’s a pretty abstract and complicated piece of work!
Conformations is a wonderful thing to find that your are up on the latest wave and all the rave’s which can be eithor positive or neg. this really gives you a better feel for taking the pulse of how we all feel and all in one spot. Just got to Love it. Thanks for making us think of what really is out there just waiting to be exposed in the right way of coarse.. Thanks again for giving us a great boost.
Bill it’s seems to me that you reject the historicity of Jesus Christ and disregard the record of the hundreds of eye witness that saw Him and touched Him post-resurectionally. In all your brilliance, theorizing and cognizing (is that a word?) the only way that I can fathom how you can poo-poo the most Wonderful Person whose ever lived is by acknowledging the truth of your own opening paragraph…”Unless you can be aware of something (which is what cognition is all about) you can’t be moral about it, feel something about it, create art about it, develop faith around it, organize a self around it, or develop in any other way regarding it.” Christ not only lived but—LIVES…I hope you become aware of Him my friend so that you may feel for Him, develop your faith around Him and find Him to be the worthy Center around which your life should revolve…And I’m not talking religion I hate that stuff…I’m talking Christ, the person…The Person of History not mythology…Find Him Friend
FROM BILL: The historical Jesus of Nazareth was an enlightened individual. You think he was “the great exception.” I think he was “the great example.” As St. Paul said in his Epistle to the Philippeans, “Let the mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus…”