thoughts about understanding

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To understand something is to grasp numerous aspects and facets of something in a way that goes into how the parts of the thing interact or how the whole of the object fits into reality.

To fully understand something like, for instance, a particular car, would require compendious amounts of knowledge about each individual part in the car, including the inner workings of highly complex computer processors and other such parts therein.

One need not fully understand something to understand it to some lesser degree.

Perhaps, for instance, no one can fully understand an apple without also having total knowledge of quantum physics and the way in which the apple warps space time around it, as does all matter; matter being a form of stored energy.

Old thoughts about understanding:
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Understanding allows for more simple routines of thought to produce results than does simple memorization.

While it is possible that every number times every other number could possibly be memorized given infinite time and an infinite memory, it is simpler to memorize the rules by which two numbers can be multplied to produce the same results.

It could be said that some being that memorizes rather than understands something does not, at bottom, actually grasp the concepts involved in that particular domain of reality.

Understanding may be somewhat illusory at some level, however, as is demonstrated in John Searle's Chinese Room argument, which I have a short essay on here.

Does a computer have the capacity for understanding in the same way that a human does?

Do humans possess something more than artificial minds?

Or, is this simply an illusion of complexity and organization?

Perhaps, at a deep level, humans and computers do not understand things in the way we would hope but, instead, use deeply embedded symbols to compare and contrast other symbols so that understanding arises from parts that do not, in isolation, understand themselves.

Perhaps a part of one's brain does not understand something in the same way a whole and intact version of one's brain does.


Older thoughts about understanding:
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Understanding is both a mental ability and mental state in relation to that which is understood.

Understanding indicates that a being has fully grasped a concept or, at least, fundamental aspects of a concept.

If someone was asked if they understand what a cat is and they reply that all they know about a cat is that it is a mammal, then they can said to not understand what is meant by the word "cat".

There is also procedural understanding like in understanding how to divide numbers or how to ride a bike.

Understanding can also mean the relationship between multiple people or parties in terms of having some ideas about what it is like to be the other.

More understanding, for example, between warring peoples can often result in peace.

Althoug understanding can be considered a fundamental feature of much work in philosophy, one of the seminal works in understanding is Daivd Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, which is called "Of the Understanding" in Hume's table of contents.

Understanding the writing, itself, in Hume's work can be somewhat difficult given the style of extremely long, dense, sentence structures and the non-standard use of words from 1739-40 (Oxford UP, Second Edition, 1978).





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