Understanding Stuff

Pantalones

I apologize for being so late in responding to your question. I got involved and then had a ?'senior moment' and forgot about it.

There is no absolute truth except for this statement! (I think)

Therefore everything has to be processed by each one of us in our lonely mind without a crib sheet or a teacher. Each of us is totally dependent upon our own ability to separate the chaff from the wheat. We are required to make numerous judgments every day and the better our judgments the better will be our life, generally speaking anyway. There are bad judgments, good judgments, and better judgments.

In my judgment there is one sure way of becoming better at making judgments and that is by learning CT (Critical Thinking).

I once asked a philosophy professor "What is philosophy about?" He said philosophy is "radically critical self-consciousness". This was 35 years ago. Only in the last five years have I begun to understand that statement

I took a number of courses in philosophy three decades ago but it was not until I began to study and understand Critical Thinking that I began to understand what "radically critical self-consciousness" meant.

I consider CT to be ?'philosophy light'. CT differs from other subject matter such as mathematics and geography in that it requires, for success, that the student develop a significant change in attitude.

Anyone who has been in military service recognizes the significant attitude adjustment introduced into all recruits in the eight weeks of boot camp. During the first eight weeks of military service each recruit is introduced to the proper military attitude. During the eight weeks of basic training there is certain knowledge and skills that the recruit learns but primarily s/he undergoes a significant attitude adjustment.

I would identify the CT attitude adjustment to be a movement from naïve common sense realism to critical self-consciousness. It is necessary to free many words and concepts from the limited meaning attached by normal usage?-such a separation requires that the learner hold in abeyance the normal sort of concept associations.

The individual who has made the attitude adjustment recognizes that reality is multilayered and that one can only penetrate those layers through a critical attitude toward both the self and the world. To be critical does not mean to be negative, as is a common misunderstanding.

If we were to follow the cat and the turtle as they make their way through the forest we would observe two fundamentally different ways that a creature might make its way through life.

The turtle withdraws into its shell when it bumps into something new, and remains such until that something new disappears or remains long enough to become familiar to the turtle. The cat is conscious of almost everything within the range of its senses, and studies all it perceives until its curiosity is satisfied.

Formal education teaches by telling so that the graduate is prepared with a sufficient database to get a job. Such an education efficiently prepares one to make a living, but this efficiency is at the cost of curiosity and imagination. Such an education does not prepare an individual to become critically self-conscious.

If we wish to emulate the cat rather than the turtle we must revitalize our curiosity and imagination after formal education. That revitalized curiosity and imagination, together with self directed study prepares each of us for a fulfilling life that includes the ecstasy of understanding.

I think that radically critical self-consciousness combines the attitude adjustment of CT and combines it with the curiosity of the cat and then takes that combination to a radical level.

A good place to begin CT is: http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Educ/EducHare.htm

I guess I cannot comprehend just what you mean. Could you supply me with an example?

Please read my response to Pantalones, I think it applies generally to the concerns you mentioned.

coberst

I thought I had comprehended your point of view completely, but now I'm not so sure. Separating knowledge from understanding in the sense that one can be passed from one to another without much loss and the other needs the first one to, as Cyracuz said, build upon to upgrade it to understanding.

So in order to be on the same page, is memorizing 3x3=9 knowledge?

I'm also not sure what dys means, so I'd love for him to expand on his thoughts.

Also, no need to apologize, but I thank you for that.

Yes 3x3=9 is knowledge. I do think we seem to be in synch.

Knowledge has a universal characteristic and relates to truth as well as we can know it. Understanding is our own creation of our meaning of a bag of knowledge. I think of knowledge as being fragments.

As an engineer I could ?'do' math and so could all engineers. However, understanding math is an entirely different matter. I never understood math until I had finished my career as an engineer. My understanding of math may not be like yours just as my painting of a landscape may not be the same as yours but they both have a universal quality in that they are based in the object of our same experience.

I agree with your critical thinking point of view. But that was not what I asked on my previous question, which may be better suited for an independent thread.

Taking the 3x3=9 example, agreeing that memory is in fact knowledge. If one person was told that 3x3=6 then would that person know that particular statement?

To generalize it, can knowledge be wrong or incorrect?

I just reread your post and think that this statements answers negatively to the question.

All investigation is partial; we think only when we are motivated to do so. I can't imagine disinterested thinking any more than I can imagine disinterested painting. Objectivity is an unattainable ideal of positivists. And their impassioned defense of the possibility and desireability of objective inquiry into an objective world clearly reflects their subjective (inter-subjective) lack of impartiality.

JL

To say knowledge is disinterested is to say that it has no practical application. You cannot make any money with it. Disinterested knowledge is what Socrates meant by "the unexamined life is not worth living". Disinterested knowledge is about examining life.

This quotation of Carl Rogers might illuminate my meaning of disinterested knowledge.

I want to talk about learning. But not the lifeless, sterile, futile, quickly forgotten stuff that is crammed in to the mind of the poor helpless individual tied into his seat by ironclad bonds of conformity! I am talking about LEARNING - the insatiable curiosity that drives the adolescent boy to absorb everything he can see or hear or read about gasoline engines in order to improve the efficiency and speed of his 'cruiser'. I am talking about the student who says, "I am discovering, drawing in from the outside, and making that which is drawn in a real part of me." I am talking about any learning in which the experience of the learner progresses along this line: "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!"

Disinterested inquiry, when it is legitimate, is not attached to any particular outcome, but it is very interested in the questions asked.

When the learner exclaims: " "No, no, that's not what I want"; "Wait! This is closer to what I am interested in, what I need"; "Ah, here it is! Now I'm grasping and comprehending what I need and what I want to know!" he is expressing a very "interested" spirit of inquiry.


Socrates' dictum might be turned around to say that the uninterested life and uninteresting life is not worth living or examining (a variation on: the unlived life is not worth examining).
Actually, life's worth is intrinsic, from my perspective.

JL

Yes, the only reason to study disinterested knowledge is because I desire to know it.

Yes, and that desire is Life itself, what Nietzsche called the will to power.

Re: Understanding Stuff


Understanding, is a condition in which a dynamic conceptual model accurately predicts the reality being modeled.

Can't understanding sometimes be equated with familiarity? When I am very familiar with a person or a situation, for example, I feel I "understand" them even though I may have little theoretical knowledge about them. I have a very close friend about whom I have little physiological or psychological knowledge. Nevertheless, very little of his behavior surprises me. Can say that I understand (am very familiar with) him?.
Here I am obviously distinguishing "understanding" from "knowledge", a personal practical grasp of something from a theoretical abstract knowledge about if.

The degree to which your conceptual model predicts reality determines how well you actually understand something (or someone).

I would suggest that in many cases, our perceived understanding of someone is often radically flawed... "He was such a nice neighbor, I can't believe he killed all those people". It's easier to understand rocks than people.

Rosborne, you say that it's easier to understand rocks than people. From the perspective of my definitions (and they are only definitions), I think we can more easily have exhaustive "knowledge" of a rock than a (much more complex and multi-system) person. AND, I think I can ONLY "understand" people. My notion of understanding has a component of empathy, what German sociologists call verstehen.

I think you are correct. I think that our first best frindship may be our first understanding.

I meant to include this in my last post.

Best Friend: Constant April

Comprehension is a hierarchy, resembling a pyramid, with awareness at the base followed by consciousness, succeeded by knowing, with understanding at the pinnacle.

Awareness--faces in a crowd.

Consciousness?-smile, a handshake, and curiosity.

Knowledge?-long talks sharing desires and ambitions.

Understanding?-a best friend bringing constant April.

I see.

Then we are working with slightly different definitions of "understand".

However, if I were to include empathy in my definition of understanding, then I think I would include emotion in my suggestion of a conceptual model. I think all that does is to add an additional layer of subjectivity. I still think understanding is a conceptual model which predicts reality, but your model just includes a model of a model.

I can buy that, Ros. But I DO think that we should include emotion and subjective in our broader view of cognizance. The conscious intellect is only part of us. AND I've always be suspicious of the ideal of "objectivity." To ME there is ultimately only subject (personal) and inter-subjective (social) understanding of an "objective" world.
And THAT is an objective fact. :wink:

I agree with JL. I think that understanding is a rare confluence of emotion and intellect and that the person receives a 'jolt' when that occurs.