Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The thesis of this paper is that learning is planful, goal-directed activity - that acquiring knowledge is intentional action. I present evidence that learning from one's experiences requires making decisions about what is worth learning, regardless of the specific mechanisms underlying the learning or of the degree of consciousness or automaticity or level of effort of the learning. Decisions about what is worth learning are the expressions of desires about knowledge. I then sketch a theory of whence desires for knowledge arise, how they are represented, and how they are used. A taxonomy of learning actions is also proposed. This theory has been partially implemented in two computer models, which are briefly described.