The Purpose of Learning

Learning is an accumulation of knowledge, feelings, and processes and assimilation thereof into pre-existing cognitive frameworks.  It occurs at all times, all times of consciousness.  In any moment the brain receives stimuli, it is processing the stimuli - or the effect of them - by incorporating them into short or long term memory.  Increasingly, brain researchers such as John Medina and others are recognizing that stimuli such as environmental surroundings, those that trigger emotional responses, and other stimuli not traditionally associated with ‘learning’ are, in fact, quite significant in the processes of learning.   

From a purely evolutionary and naturalistic perspective, one might argue that learning provides an evolutionary advantage to an organism.  In this case, an organism which is more able to identify dangers in its surroundings, or develop an ability to manipulate objects, remember locations of food sources, etc.  is more well adapted - and thus more able to survive - than those that cannot.  If one is, instead, of the inclination to believe in a higher power - a being who created the universe, presumably for some purpose of its own - learning may be argued to be a path to realizations of one’s own place in that creation.  The former makes learning seem a necessary survival tool in the ruthlessness of national selection, the latter gives learning a more noble tone.  I fall more inline with the latter.