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Michelle, I think you make a good point that you have to know OF something before you understand it, but I don't think this is the knowlege that Mason speaks of in this chapter. I think he means knowlege in a broader sense, like undertanding combined with truth and with perception. You percive something, you try to bring forth the truth by first understanding the meaning of that statement or thing ("until you know what is meant you cannot know whether or not it is true (Mason 39)" ), and then you use all the information to understand it and then you KNOW and UNDERSTAND that thing, or rather you have an understanding of what you percieve. Then, because you used true facts a)d information, you can be relatively certain that you have the correct understanding. Maybe this isn't exactly an argument about which comes first but rather that they all work together. Understanding and Knowlege are not mutually exclusive in my opinion, and I tend to agree with Mason's quote "priority is a concept derived from, and dependant on a theory of knowlege that does not apply to understanding (Mason 48)". I think that be trying to define understanding in this way, were are not understanding understanding and drawing forth its holistic meaning.
Looking back now on my post, I can see how the word meaning and understanding can be overused and a little comfusing, so if what I am saying makes no sense please feel free to ask me to explain, and I will attempt to do so with a little less confusing vocabulary and a better use of language.
If we go with what Descartes says, '"the aim of our studies should be to direct the mind with a view to forming true and sound judgement about whatever comes before it'(Mason 40)", then what we are really searching for, and the whole point of understanding knowlege or understanding understanding, is to sort out what beliefs are true and worth believing. Well, how do we do that? Descartes think that belief, truth, and knowlege all mean the same thing and that all are a worthy goal because each were a assembly of truths, whereas the Christians believed that if beliefs were built apon accepted core values than they were similarly worth accepting. But which one leads to tell us more about the role of understanding?
Understanding is a complicated thing and as Mason says in this chapter it is difficult to define because it varies from individual to individual. This is why knowlege and truth and beliefs come into play a lot in this chapter because these things really shape who you are and your perception of the world. Therefore it affects your understanding. However you have to understand what about yourself effects this perception in order to know truths and to find out meaning so once again we revert back to Michelles chicken and the egg idea.
Mental Models of Purpose of College
2 years ago
I'm not entirely sure that Mason argues that understanding varies from person to person. At the very end of Chapter 3, Mason writes that "there is no reason to imagine why these [how, I, literally as an individual, understand], should be typical or even interesting" (47). Along this same line of thinking, he points out that one of the differences between Christian-based epistemological thinking with regard to knowledge and any theory of understanding we might develop is a move away from characteristic (f) of the modern theory of knowledge ("your beliefs were essentially yours") (43).
ReplyDeleteMason probably summarizes his point most succinctly with the following example:
"If you bought a book called Understanding Relativity, you would be surprised to find that it was meant to explain relativity to any literate reader, but not, as it happened, to you" (47).
Thus, I think Mason is arguing that a subjective, individualized theory of understanding is not very feasible, even if this model was applied to theories of knowledge in the past.