Out-of-place learning as a pragmatist critique of the cognitive sciences

Abstract

The relationship between cognitive sciences and philosophy is fruitful and diverse. Nevertheless, there are few philosophical attempts to analyze the learning concept regarding its link to applications in the education field. The philosophical pragmatism provides a sustainable theoretical framework to complete this task. The aim of this study is to offer an approximation
to the learning concept from the perspective of Robert Brandom’s contemporary pragmatism. Specifically, it analyzes the ‘learning’ concept as an instance of the ‘social practices’ idea based on Brandom’s proposed normativity conception. The article defends the epistemological advantages
of considering learning according to this conception. At the same time, it warns about the consequences of limiting learning to causal and natural regularities, as it is the case of the cognitive approach to learning. To this end, this work determines the traditional and conceptual affiliations
of the social practices idea in recent philosophy. Based on such reconstruction, it shows that a learning approach beyond cognitivism is possible (without questioning its possible contributions). Additionally, it states the relationships between learning and normativity, as well as between learning and language. As a result, the analysis allows placing formal learning within the scope of
social practices, explaining its normative nature and defining how language is conditioned by it.