A Sensational View of Human Learning, Thinking, and Language

Abstract

Educational research regularly claims, with lots of evidence, that humans learn from experience. However, experience is composed of outer and inner sensations. Thus, if humans learn from experience, we would expect that educational research would be replete with work on sensation. Yet sensation in the wild, outside laboratory studies, plays no real role in educational research on teaching and learning. This paper is based on current research, in several different disciplines, that sensation and feeling activate, guide, and assess cognition and that much of human thinking and problem-solving is based on associations formed from experience that are triggered quickly and unconsciously. We explore the nature of living things, learning and thinking without consciousness, the distinctive nature of the human brain and body, and the role of the physical and social body in cognition. The paper discusses some of the implications of a sensation-based view of human thinking and acting for how we study learning, language, and social identity.