Understanding: a way of seeing

[coberst]

Understanding: a way of seeing

Know is see. Understand is grasp. These are rather common metaphors. Such metaphors help us comprehend.

Empathy is a technique for understanding. We can try to understand another person by creating a means whereby we can ‘walk a mile in her shoes’. We can create analogies of what the other person experiences as a means for us to ‘put on their shoes’.

An artist may paint in the manner of Picasso, or perhaps in the manner of a Rembrandt, or perhaps in the manner of a Monet. These different forms of painting represent different ways of seeing. They represent a personal understanding which provides us with a prism for seeing.

Mathematics is a way of seeing. Mathematics is the science of pattern. Imagine a very elaborate Persian rug. Imagine that you have only a small fragment of that rug. Mathematics offers a means whereby you might be able to construct the rest of that rug to look exactly like the original. Math can perhaps create a formula for the pattern in the rug such that you can, by following that math formula, exactly duplicate the pattern from which that rug was created.

Understanding is a stage of comprehension whereby a person can interject them self into the pattern through imagination. ‘Understanding is math’ because it helps the individual to ‘walk in the shoes’ of some other entity.

Understanding might correctly, in my opinion, be considered to be a personal paradigm. Knowledge is about truth but understanding is about meaning. Understanding is a means for placing the individual within the picture including the entity about which the individual wishes to become very familiar.

Understanding is a creative process that extends knowing. Understanding may or may not enhance the truth quality of comprehension. Picasso and Monet may paint the same object but have they captured the truth of that object.?

Is truth anything beyond what is normally considered to be truth?

Is truth anything beyond what humans have normalized (standardized)?

Does understanding aid or deter normalization?

Are you normal? Would you rather be normal than right?

Dare to be abnormal, but not foolish!

[KipBond]

I don't understand. /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/wink.gif

You should differentiate between perception & conception -- two very different types of "knowing" & "understanding".

[MidGe]

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Know is see. Understand is grasp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Semantic playing... no understanding there!

[luckyme]

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Picasso and Monet may paint the same object but have they captured the truth of that object.?

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They place an orange on a table. Picasso, Monet and I each create a painting of it. Theirs look like, well ..like theirs. Mine looks like a spaceship with orange stripes.

How far have any of us extended 'knowing' or 'understanding' or an orange? About a nanometer. We have however extended our understanding about Picasso, Monet and luckyme.
Flipping these situations to pretend they are about the orange is a conceptual trap.

luckyme

[coberst]

[ QUOTE ]
I don't understand. /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/wink.gif

You should differentiate between perception & conception -- two very different types of "knowing" & "understanding".

[/ QUOTE ]

Neural Modeling


Cognitive science has radically attacked the traditional Western philosophical position that there is a dichotomy between perception and conception. This traditional view that perception is strictly a faculty of body and conception (the formation and use of concepts) is purely mental and wholly separate from and independent of our ability to perceive and move.

Cognitive science has introduced revolutionary theories that, if true, will change dramatically the views of Western philosophy. Advocates of the traditional view will, of course, “say that conceptual structure must have a neural realization in the brain, which just happens to reside in a body. But they deny that anything about the body is essential for characterizing what concepts are.”

The cognitive science claim is that “the very properties of concepts are created as a result of the way the brain and body are structured and the way they function in interpersonal relations and in the physical world.”

The embodied-mind hypothesis therefore radically undercuts the perception/conception distinction. In an embodied mind, it is conceivable that the same neural system engaged in perception (or in bodily movements) plays a central role in conception. Indeed, in recent neural modeling research, models of perceptual mechanisms and motor schemas can actually do conception work in language learning and in reasoning.

A standard technique for checking out new ideas is to create computer models of the idea and subject that model to simulated conditions to determine if the model behaves as does the reality. Such modeling techniques are used constantly in projecting behavior of meteorological parameters.

Neural computer models have shown that the types of operations required to perceive and move in space require the very same type of capability associated with reasoning. That is, neural models capable of doing all of the things that a body must be able to do when perceiving and moving can also perform the same kinds of actions associated with reasoning, i.e. inferring, categorizing, and conceiving.

Our understanding of biology indicates that the body has a marvelous ability to do as any handyman does, i.e. make do with what is at hand. The body would, it seems logical to assume, take these abilities that exist in all creatures that move and survive in space and with such fundamental capabilities reshape it through evolution to become what we now know as our ability to reason. The first budding of the reasoning ability exists in all creatures that function as perceiving, moving, surviving, creatures.

Cognitive science has, it seems to me, connected our ability to reason with our bodies in such away as to make sense out of connecting reason with our biological evolution in ways that Western philosophy has not done, as far as I know.

It seems to me that Western philosophical tradition as always tried to separate mind from body and in so doing has never been able to show how mind, as was conceived by this tradition, could be part of Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Cognitive science now provides us with a comprehensible model for grounding all that we are both bodily and mentally into a unified whole that makes sense without all of the attempts to make mind as some kind of transcendent, mystical, reality unassociated with biology.

Quotes from “Philosophy in the Flesh”

[coberst]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Picasso and Monet may paint the same object but have they captured the truth of that object.?

[/ QUOTE ]

They place an orange on a table. Picasso, Monet and I each create a painting of it. Theirs look like, well ..like theirs. Mine looks like a spaceship with orange stripes.

How far have any of us extended 'knowing' or 'understanding' or an orange? About a nanometer. We have however extended our understanding about Picasso, Monet and luckyme.
Flipping these situations to pretend they are about the orange is a conceptual trap.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

Understanding is a way of seeing. If I understand the differences between the paintings as I never have before I will have made a great leap in comprehending reality.

[coberst]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Know is see. Understand is grasp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Semantic playing... no understanding there!

[/ QUOTE ]

Understanding is a rare happening and I suspect many people live out their complete life without experiencing the understanding of an intellectual matter. Carl Sagan is said to have commented that understanding is a kind of ecstasy. Understanding of an intellectual matter requires a long journey beyond knowing. It is worth the effort to have such an experience.

[GoodCallYouWin]

"Carl Sagan is said to have commented that understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

Well, he was a life long pot head, so he probably said a lot of dumb stuff /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[luckyme]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Picasso and Monet may paint the same object but have they captured the truth of that object.?

[/ QUOTE ]

They place an orange on a table. Picasso, Monet and I each create a painting of it. Theirs look like, well ..like theirs. Mine looks like a spaceship with orange stripes.

How far have any of us extended 'knowing' or 'understanding' or an orange? About a nanometer. We have however extended our understanding about Picasso, Monet and luckyme.
Flipping these situations to pretend they are about the orange is a conceptual trap.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

Understanding is a way of seeing. If I understand the differences between the paintings as I never have before I will have made a great leap in comprehending reality.

[/ QUOTE ]

No. You may have made zero progress, not even a little hop, about the reality of oranges. If you work real hard at it you may get some comprehension of the mind of Picasso,Monet and luckyme. To believe you made that leap will be your biggest obstacle to understanding oranges.

luckyme