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Understanding

samantabhadra
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Posted 11/06/09 - 07:00 PM: Subject: Understanding	#1
What is understanding? What is the cause of understanding? How does understanding develop? What I want to know is what understanding is apart from knowledge. I see that understanding is a result of a coalescence of knowlege that leads to insight and causes understanding. But what I want to know is what understanding is in and of itself.

NewDecartes
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Posted 11/06/09 - 07:32 PM:	#2
Understanding is another one of those baffling fundamental concepts like knowledge and consciousness. To me understanding is an extension of knowledge, a bridge so to speak between consciousness and knowledge. An insect for example has the knowledge of its own existence, it however lacks a comprehension or understanding of its own existence. Very interesting topic that I've not put much thought into. I'll have to scratch my head on this one for a bit.

reincarnated
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Posted 11/06/09 - 09:07 PM:	#3
NewDecartes wrote: Understanding is another one of those baffling fundamental concepts like knowledge and consciousness. To me understanding is an extension of knowledge, a bridge so to speak between consciousness and knowledge. An insect for example has the knowledge of its own existence, it however lacks a comprehension or understanding of its own existence. What makes you think that an insect "has the knowledge of its own existence"? In what sense does it possess knowledge? Do you also believe that an amoeba has the knowledge of its own existence? How about a tree? or a rock?
crumpled bits of paper, filled with imperfect thoughts... we all talk a different language, talking in defence... and if you don't give up, and don't give in, you may just be ok... (Mike & The Mechanics, "The Living Years")

wuliheron
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Posted 11/07/09 - 04:15 AM:	#4
Understanding as it is usually defined evolves along with meaning and both can be attributed to our ability to place things in emotional contexts. A computer or amoeba cannot "understand" in large part because they do not have emotional contexts with which to assign meaning to anything. Instead of understanding, they merely react to input. One of the more critical differences between the human ability to understand and that of apes is thought to be our emotional interest in teaching and learning from each other. In the wild apes do not attempt to teach their young, for example, nor do their young attempt to teach them. Whereas human toddlers learn early on to point to things of interest and share them with their parents (who often display interest in return), apes never display such behavior. As a result their level of understanding is severely circumscribed and they must either discover things for themselves or by being lucky enough to witness something. Thus our emotional makeup motivates us to learn and to teach as well as providing us with the more rudamentary ability to place things in specific contexts.

brainpharte
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Posted 11/07/09 - 08:27 AM:	#5
There are degrees of understanding. Understanding involves comprehension--mental integrations and constructs, including perception, memory, conceptualization, inferences, and sometimes emotions. Such constructs involve clusters of predicates and relationships and causes and effects and logical presuppositions and entailments.
"I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it along the way."

samantabhadra
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Posted 11/07/09 - 11:41 AM:	#6
When I asked this question I hadn't given it any thought. But now that I have, I think that understnding is the union of reason and knowledge, as well as the faculty of insight coupled with emoitional reactivity. The type and level of understanding depends largely upon the context and expression of the matter at hand. For example: When I hear the expression "I think therefore I am" First I react to my concept of self, then to thought, and then to self again. By means of the co-occurance of concepts within this statement I ascribe my knowledge of the faculty of thought with my knowledge of the concept of self. From this I use reason to connect the two and thereby develop an understanding of the statement at hand. However, if this statement were used in the context of a poem perhaps, then my understanding of it would change drasticaly based upon the information used before and after the satement. In this case my understanding of the statement would potentialy carry a much more emotional context with it. This would change my apprehension of the statement and would thereby chage my understanding of the statement within it's context. The faculty of understanding is not a singular concept. It is an aggregate of of the facultys of knowledge, insight, perception, reason, emotion, creativity, and reaction. It is only by means of all of these that we can generate understanding and in the absence of any of these facultys an understanding can not be reached.

Cheshire
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1 of 1 people found this post helpful Posted 11/12/09 - 11:19 AM:	#7
In an interpersonal sense I think understanding is like intellectual empathy. I think it implies a degree of impartiality. Where the purpose is to isolate the points of disagreement in order to find out where points of view deviate. I have a theory that if two philosophers disagree on a point, then they must also disagree with what is entailed and implied. So, I think understanding comes from establishing what you would believe if you were the person with whom your disagreeing.
Or not.

rigelrover
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Posted 11/12/09 - 11:26 AM:	#8
Cheshire wrote: In an interpersonal sense I think understanding is like intellectual empathy. I think it implies a degree of impartiality. Where the purpose is to isolate the points of disagreement in order to find out where points of view deviate. I have a theory that if two philosophers disagree on a point, then they must also disagree with what is entailed and implied. So, I think understanding comes from establishing what you would believe if you were the person with whom your disagreeing. And new understanding usually is expedited by open dialog with someone with whom you think you disagree.
I am more interested in questions than answers; dialog than dictation. If we can reasonably believe that there is not just a breach, but a fundamentally unclosable gap between the individual mind and the ultimate nature of the reality; the primordial thing in itself, then 'true' mystery does exist.

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