If cognition is participation rather than representation, and if symbols are stabilisations of participation rather than carriers of meaning, then the dominant picture of learning cannot survive.
Learning is almost universally described as information transfer:
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content is delivered,
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representations are acquired,
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knowledge accumulates inside individuals.
This picture feels obvious. It is also wrong.
This post makes the decisive replacement:
Learning is not the acquisition of information.It is a reconfiguration of perspective within a field of potential.
1. Why the transmission model fails
The transmission model of learning assumes:
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that knowledge is a thing,
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that it can be packaged,
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and that it can be moved from one mind to another.
But nothing we have established supports this.
If:
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meaning is not in symbols,
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cognition is not internal,
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and symbols do not carry content,
then there is literally nothing to transmit.
What changes when learning occurs is not what is inside a learner, but how the learner can participate.
2. Learning as change in what can be actualised
Learning shows itself phenomenologically as:
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new distinctions becoming visible,
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new actions becoming possible,
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new forms of relevance stabilising.
Ontologically, this is a shift in the space of possible cuts.
A learner before learning and a learner after learning inhabit different fields of potential, even if they are physically colocated and symbolically exposed to the same materials.
3. Perspective is not a viewpoint
It is crucial to be precise here.
A perspectival shift is not:
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adopting a different opinion,
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changing a belief,
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or reinterpreting the same content.
Perspective, in this ontology, refers to:
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the constraints that govern what can be noticed,
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what counts as salient,
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and what trajectories of participation are available.
Learning changes the structure of participation itself.
This is why genuine learning often feels disorienting rather than incremental. The field has changed.
4. Why exposure does not guarantee learning
One of the most persistent educational myths is that exposure to information produces learning.
But if learning were transmission, this would be true.
Instead, we observe:
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students exposed to the same materials learn radically different things,
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expertise cannot be induced by instruction alone,
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and repetition without participation produces no understanding.
Exposure fails because learning requires:
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participation in a field,
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guided alignment,
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and stabilised trajectories of action.
5. Instruction as field engineering
Effective instruction:
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structures attention,
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constrains action,
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stabilises relevant distinctions,
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and scaffolds trajectories of engagement.
This also explains why instruction is always partial and risky: fields cannot be controlled, only shaped.
6. Learning without internal storage
If learning is perspectival shift, then memory must also be rethought.
What persists after learning is not stored content, but:
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stabilised orientations,
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habitualised discriminations,
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reliable responses within a field.
What is remembered is not information, but how to go on.
This is why learned abilities decay without participation and revive rapidly with re-engagement. Nothing was stored; the field was re-entered.
7. Collective learning
Because fields are collective, learning is always at least partially collective.
Fields evolve:
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practices change,
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distinctions sharpen or dissolve,
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symbolic stabilisations shift.
Individuals learn by being re-positioned within these evolving fields. Conversely, fields learn by being reconfigured through repeated participation.
8. The ethical dimension (without moralism)
Learning has ethical consequences, but not in the usual sense.
To teach is to:
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expose others to new fields,
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destabilise existing orientations,
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and reshape what they can notice and do.
It is a matter of structural responsibility for how participation is reconfigured — a theme that will matter later when cognition meets institutions and power.
9. What follows
With this post, three pillars have fallen:
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cognition as representation,
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symbols as carriers of meaning,
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learning as information transfer.
One final question now presses:
If learning is reconfiguration, what happens when reconfiguration fails?
The next post addresses this directly:
Post 5 — Cognitive Breakdown and the Loss of Field Integrity
There we will show that confusion, error, and irrationality are not internal defects, but phenomena of field destabilisation — completing the transition from individual minds to relational cognition.
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