Understanding Stuff

Great Debates
1

Understanding stuff

I imagine comprehension to be a hierarchy, resembling a pyramid, with awareness at the base followed by consciousness, succeeded by knowing, with understanding at the pinnacle.

I am a retired engineer and my experience in the natural sciences leads me to conclude that these natural sciences are far more concerned with knowing than with understanding.

Understanding is a long step beyond knowing and most often knowing provides the results that technology demands. Technology, I think, does not want understanding because understanding is inefficient and generally not required. The natural scientist, with their paradigms, is puzzle solvers. Puzzles require ingenuity but seldom understanding.

I have for some time been interested in trying to understand what ‘understand’ means. I have reached the conclusion that ‘curiosity then caring’ is the first steps toward understanding. Without curiosity we care for nothing. Once curiosity is in place then caring becomes necessary for understanding.

I suspect our first experience with ‘understanding’ may be our first friendship. I think that this first friendship may be an example of what Carl Sagan meant by “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy”.

I also suspect that the boy who falls in love with automobiles and learns everything he can about repairing the junk car he bought has discovered ‘understanding’.

I suspect many people go their complete life and never have an intellectual experience that culminates in the “ecstasy of understanding”. How can this be true? I think that our educational system is designed primarily for filling heads with knowledge and hasn’t time to waste on ‘understanding’.

Understanding an intellectual matter must come in the adult years if it is to ever come to many of us. I think that it is very important for an adult to find something intellectual that will excite his or her curiosity and concern sufficiently so as to motivate the effort necessary to understand.

Understanding does not come easily but it can be “a kind of ecstasy”.

I think of understanding as being a creation of meaning by the thinker. As one attempts to understand something that person will construct through imagination a model–like a papier-mâché–of the meaning. Like an artist painting her understanding of something. As time goes by the model takes on what the person understands about that which is studied. The model is very subjective and you and I may study something for some time and we both have learned to understand it but if it were possible to project an image of our model they would be unidentifiable perhaps by the other. Knowledge has a universal quality but not understanding.

2

Ok, well start by turning your pyramid arse over tit

  • point downwards

<q>Understanding does not come easily but it can be “a kind of ecstasy”.</q>

Like getting rid of constipation ?

I think of understanding as a drunken old bastard, with a moderate education, and an ability to sort out mundane problems. I am one - another created me.

Can you get inside the mind of a suicide bomber ?

  • I can ‘understand’, but not approve

Did you pick up the Parfitt stuff ?

  • It was the nearest I got to a Darwininian explanation of Ethics
3

I learned long ago to just stop thinking about thinking. Its like painting a guy painting a guy painting a guy… or dreaming about dreaming, or videotaping the TV with a live video feed. Just endless complexity, its no use thinking about it really.

This, in my experience, is completely false. Colleges might actually care if you learn, but K-12 has about ten things with a higher priority than actually getting students to learn anything. Football, gangs, discipline, safety, hats and gum… theres six right there. Learning is waaay down on that list, buddy.

4

Thinking is what makes humans different from other animals. Thinking is the foundation of understanding. Thinking is necessary for good judgments. I think you limit your self by ignoring the science and art of good thinking.

Our schools and colleges are now introducing CT (Critical Thinking) in order to teach young people how to think. Adults who have ever been taight this important art and science need to learn CT on their own.

5

I’m curious as to exactly what you mean by this. I mean, I don’t think I’d argue that a cockroach is capable of abstract thought, but at the same time, Humans don’t appear to have a monopoly on cognition. Sure, we seem to do a lot more of it than other species; is that what you meant?

6

I am a strong fan of cognitive science as portrayed in “Philosophy in the Flesh”, which is an empirical science that goes to great lengths to demonstrate the connection of rational thinking as characterized in humans had its origin in the most elemental creature with a neural component.

However, I do think that the human capacity exceeds that of other animals to a great extent. I am confident that the human species has a much greater capacity for sophisticated reasoning than do our non human ancestors.

7

Well I put one of my philosophy tutors on the spot, when I asked him how did he /know/ that bumble bees were not philosophers.

Whales have brains significantly larger than ours

  • and they appear to run a CB channel

For what it is worth, I have run into a fair number of people that do not appear to ‘think’.

Ok, you are interested in ‘thinking about thinking’

  • so am I
  • what interests me is that I intuitively/subconsciously find the answer and pachydermally provide the reasoning
  • when I am really ‘thinking’ I am totally unaware of it.

This leads me to suspect that CT could be seriously counterproductive

  • gazing at ones rectum while pondering the stars
8

FRDE

You do have a vulgar way of putting things. What would your mother say if she realized you wrote like that?

9

She is very old - I intensely dislike her.

DrCube described a version of ‘looking dolls’ - infinite reflections

  • I suspect that he deliberately concealed the reference

I think that my variation was more appropriate

Your problem is that you have selected some pretentious rubbish, you don’t quite understand it ( which is not surprizing ) and you are a bit confused.

In my experience, if I am interested in something, I don’t have much of a problem ‘understanding stuff’

  • I simply find someone who knows the subject, listen to them, and paraphrase it in plain English - until they say - ‘yes - that’s it’

Cutting away verbiage is quite an art

  • things are generally simple, but it is not simple by the time people have dressed them up.
10

I don’t wish to be unkind or unwelcoming, neither am I a moderator on this board, but… sheesh, coberst, this is, what, the sixth or so thread you’ve started in the last week on more or less the same broad subject of cognition/thinking/understanding/mind. What gives?

11

I reckon he has been reading some pretentious rubbish

  • and is genuinely confused

Since he actually took a swipe at me earlier in this thread, there is some hope for him.

Given a few days, he’ll finally figure out that some people publish drivel that nobody reads, in order to keep up their inches (and Coberst, that is an academic term, widely used, and not vulgar).

12

Actually, his swipe at you is a bad sign, since it indicates that you are leading him astray by making it appear that personal insults are a legitimate behavior in this Forum.

They are not and you need to refrain from povoking other posters.

coberst, I would say that you do need to figure out what you are attempting, here. As noted, you have now started multiple threads on very similar themes that either fall into the category of truisms which no one will debate or platitudes that no one will debate. You may have noticed that most of the responses have been along the lines of “What are you intending with this thread?” and I have already had to move one thread to the IMHO Forum.

I would suggest that you take the time to read some of the actual debates that occur in this Forum. (Some are excellent; some are little more than pissing contests. However, each has a specific position with posters actually taking sides and arguing the merits of their cause.) If you are not getting responses to your threads, it is not very polite to continue starting new threads that say the same things in different words. A lack of response simply means that other posters either agree with your position and see no reason to debate or else that they find the topics less than interesting.

I would suggest that you hold off submitting new threads until you see how your current crop grows. Thank you.

[ /Moderating ]

13

Heck - I was not provoking him

I get your point - ‘a good sign’ was not quite appropriate phraseology

I’m slightly at a loss how to explain what I meant

  • something like a sign of humanity, rather than stilted jargon.

I don’t agree with the ‘truism’ bit you posted

  • a lot of his stuff is seriously value laden, but I don’t think he realizes it.
14

This is contradicted, in my opinion, by

I have not accused you of insulting coberst, but I suspect that you would not respond well to such a “criticism” of your posts.

15

So they lack the curiousity necessary for caring and without that caring they cannot understand what he means? Or do they lack caring so they aren’t curious, etc? :wink:

coberst, speaking as one tech type to another I have a tip: Just because philosophers act like they know what they’re talking about doesn’t mean they do. We’ve all known engineers who didn’t understand engineering and most everybody who worked with them knew it. Some got promoted out of harm’s way but most just vanished into car sales or insurance. While it can work that way in philosophy, and while some able philosophers end up selling life insurance anyway, determining if a philosopher is full of it is not as straightforward because there are no right or wrong answers to philosophical questions. Therefore I suggest you just default to “all philosophers are pretentious idiots” and ignore them. You’ll be happier and they’ll give you and your engineering buddies someone to laugh at. :smiley:

16

|Originally Posted by FRDE
|This leads me to suspect that CT could be seriously counterproductive
|- gazing at ones rectum while pondering the stars

That was not meant to be insulting

  • it was a coarse analogy, a variation (enhancement) of DrCube’s ‘paintings of paintings’ which in turn is a variation of ‘looking dolls’ - they are mirrors reflecting mirrors.

What I was trying to get across was, that when one is thinking about, say astronomy, it is not very productive watching ones own thoughts at the same time. Introspection and abstract investigation do not sit well together.

Possibly what I should have said is that it is unwise driving a car on a busy highway and using the rear view mirror to examine oneself at the same time.

17

FRED

I did not take your comments as an insult but did take them as being vulgar.

‘Vulgar’ like many words has several meanings, these are the meanings that I subscribe to your expressions in general–lacking in cultivation, perception, or taste; morally crude, undeveloped, or unregenerate; lewdly or profanely indecent. Basically they are juvenile. If you are a juvenile by age then that is to be expected and only if one thinks that “It Takes a Village”, as I do, should one comment on it, I guess.

18

Fair enough,

I maintain a number of levels of vocabulary, and try to select a level that I think will be most effective at conveying my meaning.

I object to your use of ‘morally crude’, as I don’t believe in ‘morals’

  • it seriously worries me when people start talking about ‘morality’
  • I buy ‘ethics’ - you can analyze them - morality is for Mullahs

‘Profanity’ has a religious overtone,

  • ‘Not belonging to what is sacred or biblical’
  • ‘Treat (sacred) thing with irreverence or disregard’

‘Taste’ is highly subjective - some people like my ‘sound bites’

  • from long before Tim Berners Lee invented the Net

I don’t think I am juvenile, or a juvenile, cynicism is rare in the young.

  • not that I was not cynical when young

Now let’s cut to the chase.

I am extremely curious to find out where you got those tomes, they are not the sort of thing that one would pick up in a book shop, and I am at a loss to work out who would recommend them to anyone (although I have a suspicion).

19

FRDE

I guess you are refering to the book by Arnold. It is an old book and I must be very careful as I turn a page. I borrow almost all my books from the library. There is a college one hour drive from my house. I have a ‘Friends of the Library’ card that for a yearly fee of $25 I can borrow any book in their vast domain of books.

20

Understanding Stuff is easy: they couldn’t fit enough ads in Maxim.