Learning without Storing Wittgenstein's cognitive science of learning and memory 1 Ian O'Loughlin Pacific University, Forest Grove, USA ian.oloughlin@pacificu.edu Word Count: 6948 Abstract: Education has recently been shaped by the cognitive science of memory. In turn, the science of memory has been infused by revolutionary ideas found in Wittgenstein's works. However, the memory science presently applied to education draws mainly on traditional models that are quickly becoming outmoded; Wittgenstein's insights have yet to be fruitfully applied, though they have helped to develop the science of memory. In this chapter, I examine three Wittgensteinian reforms in memory science as they pertain to education. First, Wittgenstein has inspired a particular strain of enactive models of memory and cognition, with important implications for theories of situated learning in education. Second, researchers have begun modeling memory as public practice, which deeply informs, inter alia, fraught theoretical discussions of assessment. Third, a number of memory researchers have rejected models based on a stored trace, a fundamental, Wittgensteinian revision with broad implications for characterizations of learning. 1. Wittgenstein and the developing science of memory Probably to the disadvantage of both, respective research traditions surrounding learning and memory have sometimes followed notably separated tracks (J. Anderson, 2000; Karpicke & Roediger, 2008). It is not even clear that these phenomena are conceptually distinct (Hoffmann, 2010). The cognitive science of learning has been routinely applied to education and education theory in a number of popular and influential works (Blakemore & Frith, 2005; Rohrer & Pashler, 2010; Siegler, 2009),but the cognitive science of memory has traditionally been relegated to a lesser role (Cowan, 2014; Karpicke & Roediger, 2008; Phye & Pickering, 2006). Consequently, treatments of memory and topics from the science of memory in education research run the risk of myopic focus on outdated models (Fenesi, Sana, Kim, & Shore, 2014); revisions to theories and models in the science of memory are slow to reach educational contexts, despite the conceptual intimacy between learning and memory. Memory science encompasses a dynamic, variegated collection of research endeavors; memory scientists admit that making sense of recent revisions to foundational concepts is no easy task (Roediger, Dudai, & Fitzpatrick, 2007). One recent family of particularly philosophical and conceptual revisions to the basic framework within which cognitive scientists understand human remembering follows Wittgenstein's lead (Moyal-Sharrock, 2009; Smit, 2010; Stern, 1991; Sutton, 2014), and these Wittgensteinian reforms have a number of important implications for learning and education. Wittgenstein was a philosopher, not a psychologist; furthermore, he was a philosopher who famously separated the respective methods of philosophy and science. It may at first seem misguided to discuss “Wittgensteinian reforms in memory science” or “Wittgenstein's cognitive science of memory”. There are three responses. First, although there is by no means consensus regarding the relationship between philosophy and science according to Wittgenstein, a significant thread through extant Wittgenstein research defends and deploys the positive application of Wittgenstein's ideas to empirical work in psychology and cognitive science (Boncompagni, 2013; Harré & Tissaw, 2005; Hutto, 2009; Susswein & Racine, 2009). Second, “cognitive science” is an inherently multidisciplinary enterprise that is taken to include philosophy as one of its constituent parts. If philosophical work, like Wittgenstein's, that takes as its focus the concepts and assumptions we bring to bear on investigations of minds, 1 An early version of this chapter was presented at the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain's annual conference in at Oxford, April 1 st - 3 rd , 2016. I am also indebted to a series of helpful and fruitful discussions I had, as the paper was developed, with two philosophically-inclined education scholars: Aila O'Loughlin and Kailea Saplan.