Abstract

Conceptual development requires learning. It requires learning to make discriminations that were previously unavailable to the subject. Notwithstanding the descriptions of learning available in the psychological and educational literature, there is no account available that shows that it is so much as possible. There can be no such account unless there is an answer to Jerry Fodor's paradox of learning. On our current understanding of concept acquisition, there is no such thing as learning. In this paper I explore a way of avoiding this conclusion. The enquiry is foundational, an enquiry into the very possibility of learning and development. The account of learning that I sketch has, however, clear consequences for our basic ideas about education.