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We agree about a lot, but not all. Here are some of the latter: One of the more critical aspects of reasoning Your?paragraph identifies two major problems - causality and necessity. They are linked because a nomological necessity [A volcano's eruption destroyed Pompeii] and a logical necessity [A or B & not-A => B] are both necessities, but not the same type. The problem is twofold:?their formation at all from facts in experience, and too how they become distinctively different. But I don't?see how the selection task bear on either problem. And both problems have been fundamental for 2 millennia, roughly from to Wittgenstein [to take two sages]. See also the "have to" example below: the causal "have to" is different from both. half stages One way forward: use levels or layers?as the unit of analysis [these are the English equivalents of Piaget's French. For what it is worth, stages pre-occupied Piaget during 1936-66, but before and after that, levels or layers were a principal focus. Roughly, he referred to levels rather than stages by a factor of 4:1. English translators have not always reflected this, in using 'stage' to translate what in French is 'level' or 'layer'].?Stages are a special case of level. A focus on stages with their indefinite large range of applications can result in a focus on sequences/outcomes with mechanisms left out. But a focus on serial levels linked by a specific model of their inter-relations makes a closer fit with agencies-at-work - the veritable micro in development.The model has to deal with normative relations?- otherwise comprehension will fail. Example: study of brother - if A is the brother of B, then B is and has to be the brother of A, a normatively necessary relation that children evidently do not grasp - see Piaget's Judgment & Reasoning (1924/1928) and Morphisms (1990/1992) [dates = French/English publication dates. A nice example of massive continuity in Piaget]. Take another example [see chapter 5 in my 2006 book Norms in Human Development]: "I have to do X" but then again "I might not" is not a contradiction but rather is a regrettable fact of life - not only possible, but frequent. Contrast "5 + 2 has to be 7" followed?by "but it isn't" - a contradiction! Children get to understand this: ergo How - what is the formation? not whether or not there are stages because there is overwhelming evidence that there are.?The issue is what models best account for what we find to be stages and how do organism solve the tasks that require those stages? Yes! We are waiting for someone to come up with additional stages.? Why not make life easier and search for serial levels under a normative model, whether or not these turn out to be stages or stage-like [cf. laws and law-like in the philosophy of science]? the structure that Inhelder posited was in the mind, was really in the structure of the tasks. No. Or rather, even if Yes, then No. If Yes, you still need an account as to what is "in the subject" enabling comprehension of the structure allegedly in the tasks. If structure S1 is in the tasks, well and good; but what is the structure in the subject [child, adult] - is it S1, or S2, or Sn? If there is no structure, I take this to mean no norms; and then I am going to ask: but how could a non-normative mind ever grasp any norm operative in the world - for example causal necessities or logical necessities? [unlike Popper, I reckon there is one world, not three]. Are norms sufficient? No Are norms necessary? Yes; and there are problems aplenty in accounting for them. The first step is to bracket off their causal manifestations [they have these alright, but they are like the play Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark]. See Wittgenstein?"Mathematics forms a network of norms [in that] if calculation reveals a causal connexion to you, then you are not calculating.. Mathematics is normative’’.[quoted in my 2009 paper in New Ideas in Psychology, 27, 228-242.] ps: Joe Becker's two suggestions today seem to be on the right lines; but I have read neither yet [hence 'seem' as a marker of my ignorance].