understanding
Posted On April 2, 2024
[WORK IN PROGRESS]
Explain how Ross’s account of “understanding” is related to:
- “Understanding” of Roger Penrose.
- Primitivism of G. E. Moore (find text where Ross says explicitly that he is closer to G. E. Moore’s “primitivism” than any other modern epistemology.
- Explain that understanding is a faculty and our faculties evolved to conform to reality, just like vision [but careful, bc need to locate passage where Ross denies that vision makes a good comparison to understanding]. Yes, vision is adapted to certain wavelengths, etc. and we can see illusions at work & stunning evidence of the brain manipulating images in a way that a camera wouldn’t, as when the eye compensates for darkness or shadowy backgrounds [in a way this reinforces the realist position instead of undermining it], but even in the illusions it is clearly that the eye is responding to the same visual stimulus.
- Share Steve Goss’s explanation of the difference between knowledge & understanding. Ross’s uses the term “understanding” more narrowly, but there is some overlap between the two meanings. Understanding for Ross is more like a faculty, so it is innate not learned, whereas understanding as Steve explained it comes from training in knowledge.
[POSSIBLY RELATED]
- Possibly mention John Vervaeke’s idea of perspectival & participatory knowing. “This isn’t just semantic meaning. This is the identity, your participatory meaning, your existential mode.”
- Also possibly relevant is John Vervaeke’s treatment treatment of INSIGHT. Does UNDERSTANDING = a kind of INSIGHT, based on implicit learning? Vervaeke points out that INSIGHT into patterns leads to a search for more patterns!!! He clearly is describing the process of WISDOM Acquisition. “These two are reinforcing each other because the insight gets your cognition to explore for new patterns and then the implicit learning picks up those new patters and then those new patterns enhance your ability to restructure. And then you keep exploring for new patternsacquiring the new patterns of implicit learning and you keep ratcheting your skills up.” Also, “There’s a deep connection between how insightful, how good a problem solver you are and your capacity for metaphorical thought.” And after the Bronze Age collapse, “So I start to get a capacity for what Robert Bellah calls second order thinking. Now, we all have metacognition -we’ll talk about this later –metacognition is your awareness of your own mind. I can ask you right now ‘what are you thinking’ you can come become aware of it. ‘Do you have a good memory? Yes or no?’ You’ll say ‘I do or I don’t’. That’s metacognition. It’s your knowledge and awareness of your own mind.” According to Vervaeke, this leads to a new kind of self-awarenesss where we (1) develop a capacity for self-deception (2) learn to correct ourselves (2) develop a sense of self and responsibility along the way (3) spirituality of self-discipline. Dhammapada: Undiscipline leads to violence through self-deception and illusion. But discipline, through self correction, and self-transcendence leads to wisdom and the ability to reduce the violence and the suffering.
- Possibly mention how Ross’s views of truth represent a kind of “eliminativism”. Not sure that should be in this glossary entry, though.