Epistemology and conceptual resources for the development of learning technologies

McDowell, following Sellars, calls „the space of reasons’ (McDowell, 1996). Animals
can use stones as hammers but what they cannot do is make hammers specifically
designed for the task. This requires holding a concept of hammer - putting hammering
into the space of reasons, i.e. understanding it in all its aspects. McDowell’s stresses
the distinctive character of human contact with the world when he notes that
receptivity (our basic intake) already involves the conceptual:

though Sellars here speaks of knowledge in particular, that is
just to stress one application of thought that a normative
context is necessary for being in touch with the world at all,
whether knowledgeably or not.

(McDowell, 1996, p. xiv)

Combined with a Vygotskian account of learning these ideas of Sellars,
McDowell and Brandom provide powerful resources for thinking about knowing as
well as thinking about knowledge itself. The contrast with Gibson’s ecology of
perception is particularly sharp, since instead of suggesting a child enters the world
experiencing an ecology of perception, rather, it is inducted into an already
constituted space of reasons. The environment that humans inhabit is not the
immediate sensual environment that Gibson claims but a mediated one, i.e. a world of
second nature in the sense characterized above.

According to this approach, our actions in the world are intrinsically normative; i.e.
when we attend to something it has significance for us and that significance is part of

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