Chapter 5 - Failures of Understanding

I find it funny that I got the most out of the chapter that was explaining why and how understanding might fail, but then I remembered learning about things in the past and that sometimes it is easiest to explain or learn something by explaining or learning what it is not... I found multiple passages to be important, so I'm just going to tell you all them and explain what I got out of each.


"the picture of an absolute, perfect perspective is less convincing than it might have seemed in the past" (67)
I really liked the way Mason stated this and think it fits well with most everything we have been discussing this semester, in fact, I think it should be the sub-head for the course title: Paths to Knowledge (the picture of an absolute, perfect perspective is less convincing that it might have seemed in the past). I don't think I really need to explain this to everyone, I just wanted to point out that it was a really great way to capture what we've been doing.

"We cannot be certain what sort of understanding is appropriate, so we cannot be certain whether we are failing or not" (68)
This is a conundrum that presents itself often, and leads to misunderstanding. As we've discussed through Lynch and Elgin, certainty is out of the question and therefore we get that our world is a little blurrier than we may have thought before this class. However, many other people might feel trapped with this struggle of certain appropriate understanding and then this applies. Either way, we still have quite an open feeling toward understanding possibilities and so it is difficult to delineate failed understanding... especially because of understanding's subjective nature.

"No set of rules or conditions can guarantee that anything will be understood, in general or in any specified circumstances. But there are many conditions that may stand in the way of understanding" (69)
Obviously this chapters is filled with negativity's of understanding, since it is about failures, but I think in addition to pointing out the negatives, it is also showing the diversity and expansiveness of understanding. Unlike the objective truth Lynch offers us, understanding really seems to be subjective in my view and therefore there cannot be rules or a checklist of understanding, which is why I think it is such an important concept.

"Unless human condition was essentially uniform, some people would be able to understand what others could not" (72)
I like this concept and how it relates to our discussion of emotions from earlier this week. We've been toying with the idea of emotions instigating interest and understanding and I also believe emotion is the most effective motivator we have as humans (well I guess survival is important too - but I think they're related). Because our emotions are not uniform, we can't immediately understand other people or understand the way others see things. We come from different backgrounds, etc and therefore need different quantities and qualities of time and information in order to understand similarly, if at all.

"As Hume had noted, 'Every event, before experience, is equally difficult and incomprehensible; and every event, after experience, is equally easy and intelligible.' " (73)
I just pretty much loved this quote, it made me think of trivia games or other knowledge competitions when you know you're familiar with the information but just can't pick it out of your brain... then you hear the answer and duh! You easily remember where you heard it/when you learned it. This relates to the articles we had for Monday's lab, especially the one that discussed the peaks and valleys of memory and cognition and the importance of repetitiveness in learning.

"Understanding can be narrowed, implausibly but not altogether absurdly, to what can be imagined because the affinity between understanding and visual imagery is so strong" (75)
This section provided a good context for understanding in that for the most part we have to imagine something in order to attempt to understand it, especially with unfamiliar stimuli. Images help us come to a consensus and foster discussion. Most basically this takes me to children's picture books, the author and illustrator come together to develop the story for the child and the images are pretty much the most important part for children (mostly because they can't read). As we grow up and start reading novels without pictures, we begin to develop our own images of characters, scenes, etc and establish our own understanding, which is great, until the movie comes out and we're pretty upset with the cast and production.

"Different interpretations may always be available or possible. In more narrowly linguistic, literary, or textual terms, it might seem to follow that there can be no final, complete, or even correct understanding of an expression in speech or writing. Hence, it might seem, real or true meanings are inaccessible" (80)
This again negates the idea of certainty, which can be taken negatively, but it also suggests that individual differences in understanding should be accepted, not denied.

Dual Idea of "understanding"
"You can understand why the members of society feel obliged to eat their dead relatives... but at the same time you can feel that you do not understand this at all" (83)
"It may be reasonable enough to believe that we can always, in principle, understand each others' language or concepts, but it seems unduly hopeful to conclude the we can always understand each other" (84)
These two sentences are in line with the duality of the term "understanding" which I get tripped up on in every chapter. It's not that I'm confused by the term, I just wish there were actually two different terms we could use to express the two different ideas of understanding, because they are seriously different ideas. One being the cognitive literal concept of understanding a statement or an action and the other being understanding in the emotional sense. I'm hoping someone else feels this way too and has some suggestions for other terms?

"Whatever is made of such claims - and however hard they are to substantiate convincingly - they are all undercut by a view that otherness or difference is not to be overcome, as a problem, but is to be accepted and welcomed" (86)
I see this statement to be completely position in that it allows for acceptance of difference in understanding. Although I will advocate some types on understanding as being un-debatable, such as addition and subtraction (I'm pretty convinced that to understand these concepts, we all have to agree that 2+2=4 and 5-3=2), I'm open to the idea that we are all going to understand things differently, due to our environment, upbringing, age, experience, sex, etc. This is a good thing, but definitely creates problems in the discussion of understanding since we can't put "understanding" in a box with a nice little label on it.