This is an instance of a tension that runs throughout much of science and philosophy: the split between descriptive and normative theories, between “this is how it is” and “this is how it should be.” Symbolists and Bayesians like to point out, however, that figuring out how we should learn can also help us to understand how we do learn because the two are presumably not entirely unrelated—far from it. In particular, behaviors that are important for survival and have had a long time to evolve should not be far from optimal.
