4/22/2004 11:20:00 AM|||Andrew|||So I'm finding this guy exceedingly interesting. This quote goes out to a certain friend I know who just happens to be studying Cognitive Science (albiet under a different name) and has even mentioned Piaget to me before.

"So here we have some examples: each is an example showing that scientific theory and scholarly effort are often not, in the specified ways, religiously or metaphysically neutral. There will of course be many more (and they will be much more obvious and abundant in the humanities and human sciences than in physics and chemistry). Consider, for example, contemporary cognitive science: the area including cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, and philosophy of mind. This is a whole congeries of research projects (or perhaps one vast research project with many subprojects) dedicated to the attempt to give a naturalistic account of the phenomena of mind: such mental phenomena as consciousness, desire, belief, intentionality, and the like. These research projects have turned up much that is fascinating and useful and informative. But the fundamental quest--the effort to give naturalistic accounts of mental phenomena--is at least questionable from a theistic perspective; the theist won't, of course, feel the need of a naturalistic account of mind. Or consider Jean Piaget (that great Swiss psychologist) and his claim that a seven-year-old child whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly will believe that everything in the universe has a purpose in some grand overarching plan or design; a mature person whose faculties are functioning properly, however, will learn to "think scientifically" and realize that everything has either a natural cause or happens by chance."

The link is here, and in fact a whole mess of articles is here.|||108265800187658442|||More Plantinga