The Character of Learning

Abstract

In this paper I propose a contrast between learning as the acquisition of theories and learning as the development of insight. I then suggest that, in a great many cases, the cognitive achievement by which we come to organise behaviour rationally is the development of insight, where this is independent of the acquisition of knowledge regimented in theories. The distinction is between a model in which a subject rationalises behaviour by appeal to knowledge of particulars rather than general theoretical knowledge. By ‘insight’ I mean a capacity for cognitive states with a singular content by which the subject fits, or couples with, the environment. This is achieved by attention. The contrast is between two answers to the question, ‘What is it to act rationally in the light of learning?’. One answer is to see the learning that shapes rational behaviour as grasp of the theories that articulate the conceptual patterns of word use and the patterns of that word use that figure in the giving and taking of reasons for what we do. My preferred answer is that the character of learning is the subject with capacities for attention that shape the patterns of concepts and of the things we trade as reasons. The subject with attentional capacities that couple them to the world is a subject who is a responsible author of the patterns of concept use and thereby what counts as acceptable reasons for acting.