Ch. 2

When we talked in class last week about Tomasello's claim that humans are unique in their ability to recognize other humans as "like" them, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the idea. Then, I read chapter 2 and I think it might be a little clearer. Tomasello provides a list of cognitive skills common to all mammals and the first one on the list is, "Recognize individuals in their social groups." I think when I was thinking about animals other than humans recognizing others of the same species, I think I ignored an important distinction. Other animals, especially mammals, need to be able to recognize those of the same species for mating and social purposes. The example I was thinking of was when a female will want to mate with the most physically impressive male of the group. She has to "know" in a way that she is supposed to mate with him and not, say, an individual from another species. Still, I think the distinction is that though she recognizes she must mate with him, which could just be something she knows innately, she does not recognize he is "like" her. 

This got me to thinking about what it means to have a sense of someone being "like" yourself. I'm not entirely sure, because Tomasello did not discuss it really, but it seems to me it would need to involve having a sense of self. Animals most likely know they exist in a way, but they do not know what makes them who they are. A dog does not know it's a dog because of all it's characteristics and then see those characteristics in another and recognize that individual as another dog. This might not be exactly what he's claiming, but this is how I understood it.

Chapter 2, Tomasello

While reading through chapter 2, I was struck with a thought of a test that could be done to test a chimp's ability to understand working together for a greater goal. We've all seen studies that show chimps with three boxes and a banana high in the air, suspended from a wire, but this test doesn't cause the chimp to have to work with another in concert in order to get what they want. If they were able to set one up so that the banana would be dropped only if one chimp stood in one place and the other used the pressure trigger of the first to open the gate, it might let us see what their interaction would then be. Would the first chimp be jipped out of the reward because he was standing on the pressure sensor needed to release the food, or would the other chimp share as an acknowledgment of the contribution by the other helper? My hunch is that the second one would not realize the work done by the first, which is something humans must do to prevent infighting among the species.
In going through the writing by Tomasello, it's interesting to realize all the important little things that we as humans can do that seem so simple at our cognitive level, but were crucial in our species evolving the way it did. I didn't realize just how important group learning (and intentional group learning) is to our species. I suppose it's true that humans are much more likely to figure out what intentions and actions are in other humans, since that ability sets us apart from the other apes. It's interesting when the study was conduced concerning testing the chimps with no human contact versus human contact versus small children. It begs the question from my mind that if chimps had simply had one of their species somewhere along the line who had a brain defect that caused them to engage in group learning and passed those genes on, perhaps the course of human evolution would have changed dramatically. I've read elsewhere that we humans killed off all the other kinds of humans that once were on the planet, they think by either out-competing them or, quite literally, by killing them off. I hope Tomasello uses information gathered from other kinds of humans in this book as well in addition to talking about other primates.

systems of language and mathematics

I thought the most interesting part of Chapter 2 was the discussion of how we have culturally evolved complex language systems--but at the same time, mathematical systems aren't universal. It got me thinking about how much we think and act is influenced by these systems (whether they're the language we know or the way we approach mathematics). I got a little bit of background in the subject when I read Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" (and I know serious scientists and academics give him crap, but as a journalist, I love Gladwell), specifically the part about how the Chinese language makes it easier for children to count and progress quickly learning math than English does. And maybe this was something I missed or will be addressed later, but I'm assuming that means there's not only the difference between social learning and not social learning (other primates vs. humans) but there are fundamentally similar yet more and less effective methods of social learning?

Tomasello’s observation that infants do not likely associate intentionality with others until they experience it themselves makes sense to me. The necessity of personal experience in empathizing with others’ situation was brought up in the discussion this afternoon with potential future professor Clark who gave the example of Mary the color scientist who knew all possible information about color but only experienced a black and white world. The group concluded that despite her thorough understanding of the information about color she would not be able to differentiate between red and green just by sight. This conclusion perhaps lends support to the notion that understanding is good because the more experiences one has the more one can empathize and thus lead an emotionally fulfilling life.

Nine-Month Revolution

Prior to nine months after birth, infants can only interact dyadically. That is, they can only recognize themselves and the object they are interacting with. All else is irrelevant to them and might as well not even exist. However, once this nine-month revolution occurs, it "result[s] in a referential triangle of child, adult, and the object or event with which they share attention" (The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition, 62). These "joint attentional interactions" start when the infants "begin to understand other persons as intentional agents like the self" (68).

Very fascinating stuff!

The Dual Inheritance Model

Tomasello refers primarily to one main point during his first two chapters. He dubs this point the "Dual Inheritance Model", with emphasis on both sociogenesis and cultural learning (53). Sociogenesis refers to a biological adaptation that allows for us to learn culturally; the "ratchet effect". Cultural learning allows individuals to not start from scratch when apprehending their environment; rather, we as humans have a biological capacity to recognize that for all antecedent and consequent relationships there is a medium of method and intention, i.e, causation, that bridges the antecedent and consequent.

He spends a lengthy amount of the first two chapters analyzing primate evolution to highlight that characteristic that is characteristically human, namely, cultural evolution. Though we share a significant percentage of genetic commonality with primates, Tomasello hypothesizes that our capacity to evolve culturally sets us apart from the primates. This also accounts for the evolution of the species across time, in that our special capacity allows for significant development, in terms of evolutionary history, and cultural history.

I find this hypothesis to be interesting, though with little time spent in genetics, I don't have much to add or subtract scientifically from his thesis. I guess I can simply say his account appears tenable to me and stimulates further interest in the book.

The theory of human cognition that is presented in the first chapter here is fascinating.  The "ratchet effect" that Tomasello described made a lot of sense to me.  The process of progress in this example is rooted in prior success that is the foundation of the current success.  This is how humans have learned and continue to learn.  Though the ratchet effect occurs in other species it doesn't appear on a cultural level like it does in humans (5) Humans are the only species able to learn without actually do something themselves, they can be taught.  His hypothesis of species unique qualities that make up how we have managed to learn so much in a (relatively) short period of time is put in a very approachable way.I think the most important thing to take away from this introduction is that this phenomenon of cultural learning isn't solely the result of genetics but it developed over time to create the unique cognitive skills that our species has today. (11)

Tomasello

If I understand Tomasello's introduction correctly, he seems to be saying that human cognition is what it is because at some point in our evolution, something evolved or was triggered that allowed us to learn from one another socially. The sentence that summed this up the best for me was, "Human beings evolved a new form of social cognition, which enabled some new forms of cultural learning, which enabled some new processes of sociogenesis and cumulative cultural evolution" (7). This was really fascinating to me. We tend to think of evolution as a slow, even process. In our own case, however, we experienced one key change (social cognition) and we were able to evolve in a different way, not just because nature slowly molded us, but because we looked at and learned from each other. 

I have always wondered at the fact that human cognition is so different from that of any other animal, but that we are so closely related to other primates. The reason seems almost circular. There was one small change, according to Tomasello, in our development as homo sapiens and since then the way that we have culturally evolved is determined by the cultural evolution itself. I'm not sure if that even makes sense. Still, it seems important to note that Tomasello plans to combine biology, sociology and history in his book. It seems that so far we have only been able to look at concepts of human though through one of these lenses. Still, it is apparent that humans are affect by them all. Perhaps this will somehow relate back to our discussions on understanding and knowledge. These both may be affected by the nature of our development.

Human Cognition

Ontogeny - The origin and development of an individual organism from embryo to adult. Also called ontogenesis.

Important that we know what this means!

Dual Inheritance Theory – in which the mature phenotypes of many species are seen to depend on what they inherit from their forebears both biologically and culturally, pg. 14

I was wondering if this was in support of a collaboration between the ideas of Nature & Nurture.

?? Nonhuman primates are themselves intentional and causal beings, they just do not understand the world in intentional and causal terms, pg. 19

How do we know that nonhuman primates don't understand this? I read the rest of the chapter and saw the author's ideas about this, but is there really any way for us, as humans, to be sure that the other primates are not comprehending the world in intentional and causal terms? Some of Tomasello's examples seem to suggest that there might be some causal understanding within the worlds of other primates... or maybe I'm misunderstanding?

Understanding the behavior of other persons as intentional and/or mental directly enables certain very powerful forms of cultural learning and sociogenesis, and these forms of social learning are directly responsible for the special forms of cultural inheritance characteristics of human beings, pg.25

I completely agree with the first half of this statement, that understanding others' behavior is vital to learning and social interaction, but i still need some help understanding how we know we're alone in this ability.

Along with imitative learning, the process of active instruction is very likely crucial to the uniquely human pattern of cultural evolution as well, pg. 34

Through his examples, I understood this, and appreciated the specifics Tomasello presented, and also, through my 22-month old niece and 5-month old nephew, I can see the imitative learning process first-hand.

Wisdom

Here's my question: what the hell is wisdom?  I am tired of reading these chapters expecting some sort of explanation (meaning definition) of the titles and not finding the answers.  He lays out several different definitions (that have been used in the past or are being used today):

"A perfect knowledge of all things that mankind is capable of knowing, both for the conduct of life and for the preservation of health and the discovery of all manner of skills."  p. 105

"Wisdom, in other words, was knowledge." p. 105

"To be wise, you need understanding as well as information, or knowledge; but understanding is so much harder to pin down." p. 112

So, wisdom results from understanding. And, as Mason describes understanding as the following:

"To understand is not to know, and any reduction of understanding to knowledge could only impress in the most restrictive of contexts." p. 107

"By no means all understanding is practical...understanding may be contemplative, passive or visionary." p 107

"To understand may be both to see or realize (passively), and to possess a linguistic capacity (actively), though how far both interpretations could be maintained, liberally, at the same time may be debatable." p 109

At the end of the chapter i was confused as to how wisdom, understanding, knowledge and truth interacted with one another.  Does one lead to another that leads to another?  Are they all interconnected or completely separate?  And, without using a simple definition (as Mason claims that this provides no real understanding) what exactly do they all mean in our daily lives?  Furthermore, is an understanding of all our pertinent to a successful, meaningful life or "understanding" of ourselves?

beyond understanding

While this chapter was very interesting, I had a lot of lingering questions once I was finished.  First of all, he says on page 99 that "It could be argued that human beings possess some qualities— free will, intuition, or original creativity, for example — that set them aside from (or above) the normal course of nature, and therefore outside any generalized form of understanding."  Okay, I "understand" that there is no way to generalize understanding of human beings because all people are so radically different from one another that it would be impossible (as far as we know now) to make broad assumptions about the entire species of human beings.  But is he also saying that because of our free will, intuition etc. that humans are incapable of understanding motivations?  For example, if someone murdered another person in self defense, is it impossible to say that we understand that they killed in self defense?  Is it just a lack of complete information (or being able to completely understand that person's understanding of the situation) that leads us to conclude that we can't understand?  I find it hard to believe that we can't understand someone's actions or the reasons for their actions.  I agree that it would be impossible to completely understand them, but do we have to have complete knowledge in order to have an understanding of something?  And if so, couldn't we argue that there is no real understanding because we can never know everything about something?

I though Mason brought up a great point when he said on page 90 that "a reluctance to accept anything beyond understanding may be connected with an unwillingness to contemplate nonhuman perspective."  However, what kind of perspective are we expected to take?  Is he referring to animals, trees etc. or some non-human entity?  Would that even be possible?  I disagree that the reluctance to accept something that is "beyond understanding" is related to us being unwilling to look at it from different angles.  I think the reason's are more practical: at this point humans need evidence to back up claims and if they have to look beyond a human perspective of an issue, there would be no concrete evidence.  How can you justify something when not looking at it from your perspective?

I totally agreed with Mason's view that the most interesting things are beyond our understanding though.  Whatever that means.

Ch6&7

Does Mason argue that it is better to believe that you can understand everything, and that nothing is unintelligible? Or does he think that it is better to agree that not everything can be understood.

Also, he present the idea of relative understanding that maybe it is naive to try and pin down some particular kind of understanding as right or wrong.

"styles of understanding need not be limitied to the mechanical or the pseudomathematical or to straightforward visual imagination. Simply because something seems beyond one form of understanding, it need not be beyond another (102)"

At the end of the chapter, it seems like Mason is saying you cannot talk about being beyond understanding without first taking this relativism into account. If you were to agree that context or framing produce different understandings then it is impossible to say that something is completely unintelligable, maybe it is just unintelligable outside of that context.

I really like how wisdom and understanding were related to philosophy in the last chapter. I like that Mason rejects the idea of pure knowledge as a means to obtain wisdom. Wisdom, he says is a broad and vague version of knowledge which also fits with the ideas of understanding presented in chapter 6. Mason seems to be giving philosophy and understanding a more noble aspiration then pure knowlege and he attempt to define both in terms of wisdom.

Chapters 6 and 7

I have a hard time dealing with much of chapter 6. Although Mason seems to make many different points, he never wants to take one, but instead, offers many explanations and then shrugs and moves on. I especially struggled with the sort of "challenge" he offers at the end of chapter 6. It would seem that a conversation with him about understanding, say, how to cook eggs, would go as follows:

"Do you understand it?"
"Why yes, I understand."
"Do you really understand it?"
"...I think so, yes?"
"But do you REALLY understand it?"
"Well, I thought I did?"

etc etc etc.

I just find it unfair that he offers understanding in such a way that we only understand what we think we understand as a response to any challenge. Everyone thought they understood why people got sick in the year 400, but their understandings were false. Is it possible that additional knowledge will then take our understanding and destroy that as well? Oh yes, but that's saying that all we've worked for so far to gain in understanding can be knocked over easily. I'm not convinced that it's just that simple.
His patronizing tone when describing believing that there are things we'll never understand I found to be rather insulting. I agree that more and more we are finding better modes of understanding and that we should never be satisfied with our level of present knowledge, but I firmly believe that there will always be something that we don't yet understand. Do I necessarily think that there's one thing we'll never understand? Not really, we're always advancing our scope and depth of knowledge about every subject every day. But do I think there always will be something yet to be understood? Absolutely, otherwise we might be able to speculate as to some kind of fence at which we would understand everything entirely.
Perhaps I should give him the benefit and say that he's trying to say that it's up to us if we want to believe that one thing will never be understood and it's fine to find comfort in that. Now, I don't think Christians necessarily need defending, but I can think of a few Christians who believe we will never understand God and to say that it's just a matter of time before that too is uncovered is throwing a wrench into the basis of the religion. To do so is to put oneself at level with God, which is a strict no-no in Judeo-Christianity. It's true that over time, things we once thought to be religious in nature turned out to be causal. We once thought illnesses were caused by evil spirits, then by the will of God, and then by germs. We once thought we were unique and made in God's image. Then we found out that we're descended from primates, then we found out we share half our genome with rats and 1/3 with bananas. So is the next step to say, "We once thought that God existed, then ..."? I think Mason gingerly brings up this option without committing to it.
Then again, perhaps he's an atheist?

Mason Chapter 5

I agree with Laura; Mason is definitely taking a middle ground here. It is quite obvious that a finite mind cannot collect, comprehend, and connect an infinitude of facts (we can't know everything), but it would also be fallacious to say we cannot know anything, for that statement itself would be incomprehensible. Mason also discusses limits of understanding, but he used so many examples that I lost his own line of argument. However, his example of Wittgenstein's limit (whatever is beyond language is beyond comprehension) stimulated some thought; if something is beyond language (and hence beyond comprehension), would we even be able to know of it? If so, why should we care about it, since it would be a futile effort to attempt to gain knowledge of it. For Wittgenstein, this is where mysticism comes in, which is a purely personal experience, because the limits of language deny the possibility of sharing and communicating the mystical.

Ch.5

I could be wrong, but the way that I understood Mason's overall point in chapter five was that he was sort of striking a middle ground, saying that we cannot understand everything but that it is foolish to say there is nothing we can understand. This is an oversimplification, but it is how I understood his argument. He brings up several times the question of whether or not there exists an objective limit to understanding. I initially did not agree with this idea, because I feel that understanding is extremely fluid and it depends greatly on our own minds and experiences, much like Kant would argue. Still, the more I thought about it, the more I felt that there were limits to understanding in some ways. Like Matt said in his post, we could never know everything simultaneously. 

Mason himself argues this as well. There are also limits in other ways. We cannot understand certain scientific facts or ideas because we lack the technology to research them. I also think that while there may not exist an objective limit within a particular subject or idea that is the same for everyone, it is true that there are simply certain things that are more or less intelligible than others. A book written for kindergardeners is simply easier to understand that quantum mechanics, even for someone who has studied quantum mechanics for their entire life. The degree to which it is easier does depend on the person. Someone who cannot read at all will not be able to read the book or understand quantum mechanics, but it would be easier to teach them simple reading, making the book itself easier to understand. I'm not sure if my reasoning here makes sense, but my point is that I agree with what I feel Mason is saying, that understanding (and the failure to understand) is both a product of our own personal cognitive ability and experiences and a result of what we are trying to understand.

Mason's discussion on page 80 was also helpful to me. He talks about how ideas for understanding are not the same for, say, literature as they are for the physical sciences. This is something we have talked about before, the idea that there are straight facts and then there is something else. I read Mason to be saying here that we think differently about understanding depending on the field to which we are applying it, but I'm not entirely sure.

Dekanting fluid thought

“In the land of the blind, the man with the one eye rules all”

This quote was one that stuck out from the movie Minority Reports (and due to Tom Cruises horrible acting it is one of the few things I remember). It sheds light on the argument by Kant, we can recognize restrictions on what we will be able to know. Like the quote above, Mason feels like we would not be able to put an objective barrier to what we can or cannot understand. We would not be able to tell that we are blind and that the man with the one eye will never know what experiences the blind will go through. However although the one eyed man doesn’t see the whole picture, he knows that others can see nothing, and this is why I feel like Kant’s argument has some merit.

To some degree I do believe Mason, but I also feel justified in accepting some points that Kant makes. Kant’s philosophy has solid ground in saying that everything that we understand is what we perceive to understand by using the building blocks of experiences that we think is objective. If we are to say that there is a dog in the window. We define dog by certain rules and we define window by another certain rules.  These blocks of knowledge are put together to form what we understand to be in the window.  The example which was used in class about how if we all jumped on a magic school bus and flew to mars, we would only define those items by the terms that are natural to earth, and make new terms with relation to our experiences on earth.

Another example would be if we weren’t born on earth but instead in a virtual machine in which we saw and felt nothing. We could probable not define anything since we have no building blocks to build relation from. If all of a sudden there were three dots and that is all you could see, everything that you could think about would revolve around those three dots. To give mason credit there is no way for them to realize that they won’t understand the world in the same way we do because they only were exposed to a certain world.

                So the question then comes, if people couldn’t realize they could not understand anything above the three dots, then isn’t Mason right in saying that we cannot say that there is ever a barrier to understanding because we can never see it? My theory is that we have come to an understanding that we have built worlds from blocks of what we understand, the mere fact that we continually are building experiences from other experiences make it seem that there is never one concrete static box that can be filled and defined, but instead an ever fluid mixture that swishes around and we just choose to be justified in certain solid beliefs because we had the ability to find an undefined X and took the opportunity to bring it into terms of known Y’s and Z’s.

                When Kant states that nothing can be completely understood, Mason refutes him by stating that it is a circular argument that you are saying “you cannot understand what you cannot understand”. However if you recognize that you define the world by what you understand, you are dependent on what you understand being in some way be true. Since that can never be proven, your ability to understand will have a barrier.

Am I understanding skepticism?

I'm not sure if I really got the concept that Mason was trying to deconstruct in Chapter 5. He said he was going to look at the notion "that anything--or rather anything important--be can be beyond understanding." He then outlines what philosophical skepticism is, saying it's "the view that there are many things that, in practical terms, I do not or cannot understand. The barrier to understanding lies in the makeup of the human mind." But then he adds the slightly mocking example, "Just as I am not smart enough for superstring theory and too lazy to learn Finnish, so my mind may not be fitted to achieve certainty."

Unlike Mason (I think--everything I write in these blog posts should go with the caveat that I could be grossly misinterpreting the text), I believe that it's possible to have things be beyond understanding without saying that things are inherently unintelligible (a view I think we rejected on Tuesday) or that minds are weak enough that certain concepts are beyond us. Here's my thinking:

It's pretty much given that we don't understand everything. ('We' can mean either an individual or society as a whole.) However, we reject the idea that ideas that could be understood are inherently unintelligible--everything can be understood, though it must be placed in the correct background. So I place the reason that we don't understand everything somewhere in the human mind--but not where Mason does. He seems to present this view as saying that human minds are incapable of understanding certain ideas, which looks to me like the same kind of argument for unintelligibility--I don't think there's a concept a human mind can't comprehend, it just needs the right background to do so (which could indeed be near-impossible to achieve, but the point is that it shouldn't be entirely impossible.) So where are the limits?

I think we can also assume that, while human minds don't have this threshold of being able to understand certain things but not other things, human minds don't have unlimited abilities--that is, they can't do everything at once. Understanding is (most of the time) not instantaneous; it takes time. And that's where the big limit is. Could humans understand all there is to understand in an infinite amount of time? I don't see why not, given the bases this argument rests on. But it's not like I'm too lazy to understand Finnish and that's why I don't know Finnish (or substitute whatever-ancient-text that we haven't figured out how to translate), I'm just trying to understand other things in the limited time I have to do such things.

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.

Chapter 4 - Intelligibility

Chapter 4 was, I thought, extremely challenging. The subject of the chapter, intelligibility, was defined as follows: "Something is intelligible if someone can understand it" (56). After briefly discussing the historical and social contexts in which intelligibility has been framed and defined, the author discusses Kant. This is where I got lost.

On page 60, the author discusses some difficulties with Kant's ideas concerning intelligibility. First, Mason argues that Kant upheld the "unity of the rules of understanding" while at the same time framing understanding as subjective. The second problem proposed by Mason was Kant's "idealism." To me at least, this sounded a lot like the first critique. "To the blunt question: is intelligibility a characteristic of things (nature, 'the world') or does it depend on us?" (60). Could we spend some time in class clarifying these ideas and concepts?

On pages 64-65, the author concludes the chapter by asking whether not anything in general can be said about intelligibility in nature. With regard to Kant, the author argues that his additions may have proved unhelpful in light of the interpretation that "our understanding of nature is not a direct vision but mediated through our concepts, marshaled by our reason" (64). Spinoza's contributions are likewise potentially unhelpful due to their rigidity, although his "arcane-sounding doctrine of the infinite attributes of God or nature" are of "some interest" (65). Again, I was confused by both of these concluding thoughts and would appreciate some class time devoted to distilling them.

Chapter 4, Intelligibility

I liked that Mason was able to better frame intelligibility by connecting it historically. It helps to better understand the context in which people look for understanding or believe what they do. What this implies, however, is that something unintelligible right now might be intelligible in the future. That seems to be a strong argument for research in almost any field, and that there is no such thing as extraneous information and knowledge. Perhaps knowing the genomic makeup of fruit flies seems silly to some people now, but if they use it to better combat the affects of aging on the human body, no longer will it be extraneous!
What this seems to lend to is a sort of utility about understanding. Keeping information to be understood later is an interesting concept. I can definitely relate it to some property like a color; people disagree about colors, just as people disagree about their perceptions about intelligibility in the same capacity. Although it does sound somewhat subjective, understanding is exactly that as well. I just think it will take a few more examples until I have a better grasp of intelligibility as a trait of understanding.

Intelligibility as a property

This was the part of the chapter that most interested me, though I think it might be doubling down on themes touched on for other blog posts. On page 56, Mason writes, "Something is intelligible if someone can understand it. If someone can understand something, it is intelligible. So is intelligibility sort of a property?"

As I see it based on this quote, it seems that Mason is now trying to separate intelligibility from understanding so they are not just defined with each other. The big question is whether or not it (intelligibility) lies in a realm separate from human definition or dependent on it. Is it like mass, an empirical property, or something like 'easiness,' which we define on a case-by-case basis?

And here, as I think about this, I'm worried that I'm sliding into meaningless relativity. After reading further, I found myself nodding in agreement as Mason writes on page 63, "A text can be unintelligible in the simple sense that no one can or could make anything of it. But intelligibility in principle does call for the strongest possible context...someone could understand it." I kind of took that to mean that, in the long run, nothing is unintelligible. We may not know enough to find meaning in something, whether it's an ancient text or an element of physics of which we didn't even realize there was significant, but that doesn't mean it's unintelligible because at some point in the ever-extending past or future, someone could have or could get it.

Shouldn't it be more complicated than that? I feel like I might be missing something. And doesn't that line of thinking invite "false intelligibility." If someone sees the shape of a dog in a random cloud, does it now mean something? (And what does that have to do with understanding?)

Intelligibility

Okay, so now that I feel a ton of pressure to make a really good post, and I have to say that I am almost too confused to make some coherent comments on this particular chapter. Maybe the problem lies with the fact that I do not have a good idea of what intelligibility means.

I looked the term up online and found this definition on Wikipedia (I know its a sucky source but it is also sometimes provides the best summarizing information):

"In philosophy, intelligibility is what can be comprehended by the human mind. The intelligible method is thought thinking itself, or the human mind reflecting. Plato referred to the intelligible realm of mathematics, forms, first principles, logical deduction, and the dialectical method. The intelligible realm of thought thinking about thought does not necessarily require any visual images, sensual impressions, and material causes for the contents of mind. Descartes referred to this method of thought thinking about itself, without the possible illusions of the senses. Kant made similar claims about a prior knowledge. A priori knowledge is claimed to be independent of the content of experience." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligibility_(philosophy))

I guess this makes me think of intelligibility as a more technical term for understanding, and it relates to the way in which Paths Lab connects to Paths class. We learn all the concepts and talk about the abstract idea of understanding through emotion, or understanding as an application of knowlege, and today (Monday) in class we read articles which relate to the technical "brain" side of it, like experiments and proof that what we are thinking and discussing really aides to the achievement of understanding and articles which better define what understanding really is.

I like the quote, "a desire for understanding is, or should be wholly relativized. What needs to be understood will depend entirely on the assumptions within a society at a particular time...So do not expect any timeless thoughts about desires for understanding or intelligibility (Mason 54)". I think that this shows how understanding relates to this idea of intelligibility. You cannot understand something outside of what your mind, or the collective mind of society, in this case, has defined or taught. You cannot relate a new concept without first conceptualizing an older, steadfast idea to which the new concept can relate.

The article we read for Monday showed a figure, which marissa talked about in her post, where understanding was built up with the introduction of a new problem. However, there was no point, after the first problem in which the understanding fell below the initial starting point because each new concept was built apon old ideas. I think it would be interesting to introduce something completely unrelated or unintelligible and see what sort of graph would result. Would there even be an increase in understanding with no past information to build from?

Just because something isn't intelligible now, doesn't mean it never will be

While reading this chapter, I was particularly intrigued by Mason's question "is intelligibility a characteristic of things or does it depend on us?" (60) It reminds me of Lynch's point that we can never find objective truth, because we can only view the truth through our own eyes and not a God's eye perspective. Intelligibility, though it is also dependent on our interpretation, differs from truth in that it is judged by a particular society's understanding at a given time, whereas the truthfulness of something is more concrete. Something either is true, or it isn't. But something that is not currently understood could possibly come to be understood at a later point in time, so it does not make sense to call something "unintelligible in principle" (63).

In another class that I am taking, we are discussing the hard problem of consciousness, which is how physical processes of the brain create subjective experience. Right now nobody really knows. Some philosophers and psychologists have developed theories that explain away consciousness, others have said that we are not capable of understanding consciousness at all, but still others have pointed out that although we cannot currently understand consciousness, we may be able to achieve an understanding of it in the future. Those who hold the latter idea would agree with Mason's final sentence on page 65: "There is no point in thinking of nature as unintelligible; but there may be ways in which it is intelligible that we do not understand (yet, if you are an optimist)."

I'm with them.

Mason, Ch. 4

"...more understanding must be better than less, and that perfect transparency is an ideal. Such views might have played an ideological role in the development of the sciences. An obvious exception might be in understanding ourselves and others." p.52
Generally, humans strive for more understanding, and transparency (which, I believe, then leads to understanding) is then a good thing. I think Mason is striving to decipher why humans attempt to gain understanding. In an ideal world, such a drive for this understanding created the sciences. Perhaps this drive for understanding is also linked to the creation of the arts, as we discussed in class today. The arts and science are not singular ways to knowledge, and it may be that the artist creates his/her work in an effort to understand the subject, or to share his/her understanding with others.

"One conclusion that might seem to follow is that a desire for understanding is, or should be, wholly relativized. What needs to be understood will depend entirely on the assumptions within a society at a particular time. As concepts develop, what we want to understand will change." p.54
Mason begins to explain by stating that some of this must be true and proven by common sense. His time travel example is such. I think that this is not only true for eras, but also for lifespans. Children want to understand far less than their adult counterparts. Cognition and comprehension grow then in parallel bounds with understanding, which is linked to the articles we read for lab today. Thus, time is a severe and debilitating limitation both in cognition and understanding.

"Something is intelligible if someone can understand it. If someone can understand something, then it is intelligible. So is intelligibility a sort of property? If so, is it a property of whatever is understood, or a property that depends on some degree on a relation to a person who is doing the understanding?" p.56
These statements seem to be a bit of a conundrum, one that closely resembles the chicken-and-the-egg example. However, Mason does not seem to imply that intelligibility and understanding are synonyms; rather, that without one, the other does not exist. If a concept is unintelligible, it follows then that it can not be understood. He goes on to state that intelligibility depends upon an individual....thus, it is a property of the person, not the concept. So it seems, understanding, like truth, is universal and not to be contained by the limitations of an individual.

Mason Chapter 4

"Our understanding of nature is not a direct vision but an interpretation mediated through our concepts, marshaled by our reason. Nature in itself is unknowable. The fact that we understand cannot be surprising because, in short, our understanding makes for us the only nature that we can understand" (64).

Isn't Mason saying two different things here? 1) There exists some objective reality beyond our comprehension, 2) nature is self-created or projected. Is he affirming both? In the case of the second, wouldn't we have a perfect understanding of nature, since it is created by the understanding itself? Could the understanding have an "amnesic episode" after it creates nature, and intellectual inquiry is nothing but the process of piecing it all together? The intelligibility of nature would make sense from this standpoint, since the mind is just "remembering" what it lost.

Making Connections

The article we read for today, "Dynamic cycles of cognitive and brain development: Measuring growth in mind, brain, and education," was especially interesting to me because the concepts it discussed were directly connected to the research I'm currently doing. There was a specific passage (p. 138) which spoke about monitoring the EEG energy and correlations between brain waves from different parts of the brain certain activities. The research I am involved in looks at the P300 brainwave in rats which we believe has a correlation with memory. We are looking at the central and parietal sections (both left and right for both) and, similarly to the article, started at one level and once the rats seem to remember the activity and show that memory and practice, tweak the level a bit and see if they can adjust. The rats first learned that by pushing a lever a food pellet would come out. The P300 brainwave grew gradually bigger each day until it tapered off, then we added a "food tone" which indicated the food would come out and the rats had to learn that not every time they pushed the lever food came out, instead they had to push the lever and if they heard a tone food would come out. We are currently in the stage in which there are two tones: a food tone and a non-food tone and are seeing if the rats can distinguish between the two. It's interesting how accurate figure 8.10 on p.143 is to what we've experienced.

Emotions and Cognition

After reading both the article by Fischer on the developmental cycles of the brain, and the article by Immordino-Yang and Damasio on the role of emotion in education, I began to consider how the two might be inter-related. Fischer highlights time periods at which the brain is most suited to obtaining certain types of new knowledge, showing periods in which the ability to learn certain types of information increases. Does the development of emotions and social understanding correspond to these jumps in Fischer's data?

While I doubt any of us in this class are qualified to answer that question, it does pose an interesting question. How extensively is emotion intertwined with the ability to learn? Does the lack of an ability to attach emotional 'tags' to cognitive knowledge impair the ability to learn? Evidently, according to Immordino-Yang and Damasio. Conversely, does the ability to learn jump as social cognition becomes more refined?

Regardless of the answer, it is fascinating to read about how central emotions are to higher thought. The brain is incredibly cool.

Monday's Readings

I am thrilled to see that there is more attention being paid to emotional intelligence and the important role it plays in cognition. The realms of thought and emotions seem so cavernous that it's hard to think they could be reconciled in any meaningful way. Yang's research connecting emotions to higher levels of thought through high school students and patients with damaged frontal lobes is intriguing. It's clear from the text that having emotional responses and being able to apply information gathered cognitively is vital to remembering and using said knowledge. I guess I'd like to see a future experiment that studied those who have been stunted emotionally, and how it plays in their abilities to apply feelings of right and wrong to situations. It begs the question about the way our society treats young men. If boys are taught that they must be tough and only show anger, is it possible that we are also damaging them mentally? Could there be men out there who would otherwise have a normal spectrum of emotions but have been told to "man up" who are also suffering from certain cognitive deficits as a result?
The information given in the handout was also interesting; if anyone has taken evolution, they'll notice some of the graphs seem to work along one of the theories of evolution. There is a theory about how evolution works that predicts that evolution moves along great changes, and therefore, works sporadically. Perhaps this is the same way the brain actually functions. When new neurons get their chance to work, they create millions of new connections in the brain at a rapid pace, but will slowly trickle off as they become obsolete.
The most important part of the handout was clearly the last page. I liked the information given, but was shocked to find out that some teachers have misread this information to say that during these flurries of mental activity that the brain simply cannot handle any more information, and we should therefore, stop teaching students new things! It's really important for modern scientists to be just as good at oration as they are at reporting data. Not only do they have to show findings, they must explain it in a practical way, lest their work be used in just the opposite way from how they intended.

Readings for Monday's Lab & Tuesday's Understanding

Education, Children & The Brain
Even though I am a magazine journalism major, I have spent most semesters in psychology classes and therefore was pretty familiar with the material we were given to read and watch for this week's lab on Monday.
I really enjoyed the article about Nico & Brooke and their brain development differences due to having their brains segmented and removed. From this article, we can see the differences between the right and left hemispheres and how these specific sides of the brain are used in reasoning and "understanding" the world around us. Interestingly enough, in my nonverbal communication class, we are reading Paul Ekman and just finished up an exercise regarding matching emotions to faces, most likely the same exercise these boys went through.

The question I came out of the reading with is, do individuals have a "stronger" left or right brain that impacts their ability to understand life? Is that why some people are much better at articulating reasons behind actions while others can't give much more than, "It felt/looked/sounded right"? This goes hand in hand with the inital article passed out in class regarding the changes children go through while their brains are developing. Is it possible that the adults that have difficulties "understanding" or articulating information have missed something devlopmental in one of the brain's hemispheres? Does that initial article suggest important years in which children/teens need to develop comprehending abilities that once missed out on, may impact the rest of their lives? And does the Nico/Brooke article suggest there may be medical ways to overcome this?

Or should I not be thinking via this brainwave and instead focus on the idea that individuals differ in their abilites to "understand" solely due to brain differences which is why we can and will only ever be able to understand ourselves (insight from Understanding chapter). Though others can share their feelings and emotions with us, we can only take from that what they tell us and obviously will never know if we "understood" them. (Some of this may have come from our emotions discussion in psych, but it's hard to differenciate such similar material.) The Youtube lecture also spent time with the issue of emotions and further established the notion that although emotions play such a giant role in our lives, and the emotions of others can signal our own emotions, we can never really be privy to another's emotional state, it's just impossible.

The ideas of inabilities due to brain development is echoed in the final article for lab, in that missing a brain region could trigger a nerological malfunction, which could negatively impact understanding capabilites, as well as triggering emotions that impact social behaviors. This fits into all of the other readings in that yet again we see the power and importance of emtions and the concept of understanding emotions/the implications misunderstanding may have on an individual.

I also found this to be important:
"In this group, patients sustained comparable
prefrontal damage in early childhood, rather than as adults. As
they developed, these children were cognitively normal in the
traditional IQ sense, able to use logical reasoning and factual
knowledge to solve the kinds of academic problems expected
of students. However, while smart in the everyday sense of
the word, these children slowly revealed themselves as having
varying degrees of psychopathic and antisocial tendencies.
They were insensitive to punishment and reward and did not
seek approval or social acceptance as typical children do."
This again suggests that an abnormally developed brain impacts a child's abilities, my question here is does the part of the brain that is injured impact the child's abilites differently? I assume yes.

Finally the article sums up the issue at hand:
"As both the early- and late-acquired
prefrontal damage patients show, knowledge and reasoning
divorced from emotional implications and learning lack
meaning and motivation and are of little use in the real world.
Simply having the knowledge does not imply that a student
will be able to use it advantageously outside of school."
I like this idea in regards to anyone, not just those who have a mis-developed brain, and I think this is what we are trying to understand in this class. Meaning is not separate from emotion, knowledge is not separate from understanding. All of these things need to work together if someone hopes to achieve something worthwhile.

emotions at work in reasoning and knowledge

Yang and Damasio's article on emotions and their role in learning and making decisions in the world makes a really strong case for the importance of cultivating and understanding our emotions. Before reading this article I was more or less convinced that for the most part understanding our emotions was important insofar as we ought to be aware when our emotions are screwing with our ability to reason. The only really important use emotions seemed to have was to allow us to relate to others. This article makes a strong case for showing that I have just completely misunderstood what emotions have been doing. Instead of emotions screwing with my ability to act rationally in the world they have actual been what makes it possible for me to pick a best response and then act on it. Their argument says that it is not just because of our ability to learn from past mistakes by judging other people's responses to particular actions but also our ability to select a set of reasoning as being appropriate for a given situation. The evidence of this is from lab work where people with frontal lobe brain damage can use logic and prior knowledge to come to conclusions in the lab which seem to be ethical but if given the situation in life they are at a loss about what to do. If I understand this article, the reason for their inability to choose how to respond as effectively as they could in the lab is because they now lack the proper emotional response to value the situation in a way that allows them to pick the correct response. But in the lab it is not needed because they are provided with the information needed and an emotional response is not needed. What this makes me curious about is how different is the decision making process of someone who attempts to suppress emotions verse someone who embraces their emotions?

What have I learned, what have we learned from these chapters so far? What has constituted understandings of understanding historically, the methodologies therein assumed, the distinction(s) between knowledge and understanding, and the possibility of intelligibility. Much of these perspectives I have studied in various Philosophy courses over the last several years, but the part that stood out the most for me was the distinction between knowledge and understanding.

Knowledge, as we learned from Elgin and now Mason, has to do with justified true beliefs. Understanding is much more comprehensive and allows for degrees. I can have a poor or a great understanding of epistemology, but my knowledge cannot be either poor or great in itself. The amount of knowledge I have on something can be quantified, but not knowledge itself.

So, with Elgin's suggestion, and with Mason's elucidations, we can pursue understanding through reflective equilibrium. Do we abandon knowledge or the pursuit of it? I must say nay, because when we pursue understanding, along the way we come about bits of knowledge, so it may be fair to say that pursuit of understanding necessarily entails the acquisition of knowledge.

When applied to epistemology, I say that I have a greater understanding of it now, after several weeks of reading about it than I did prior. Along the way, I have obtained more knowledge of the subject. These distinctions have been helpful.

Ch. 3

Mason seems to grasp the relationship between knowledge and understanding as being contingent on each other certainly.  His argument concerning their relationship is addressed on page 40 when he says, "...questions about the priority if understanding only arise, and only make sense, in contrast with past claims made for knowledge."  He goes on to argue that to even conceptualize the two similarly, "would be misguided." (40) I think that Mason sees that in the past knowledge and understanding to have been used interchangeably or at best as two sides of the same coin.  I think he argues that that they need to be comprehended distinctly and then be utilized together.  Kind of like that mathematical diagram with two circles that partially overlap of which the name escapes me.

Chapter 3

I had a hard time finding any compelling reasons to beleive that understanding can only happen at a plural level. Mason explains that understanding has had a history of moving form personal to a more collective, and that examples reign in the areas of a jury deciding on verdicts and laws. But I still think that understanding has to happen at a personal level in order for everyone to be able to conclude an answer. Being presented information, something we might call knowledge, and then coming to a collective understanding probably does occur at a macro level, but if each person doesn't cognitively get it on their own, then people will be just lying in saying they understand. Even if other people are there to help them understand, without the work being done in their own brain, then there's no understanding. I feel that personal understanding can then be used to create a synthesized group understanding, playing into what Mason described, but saying that personal knowledge must be "grounded" in discourse shared with others seems like it's subject to as many errors as personal understanding. A group of people can misunderstand just as poorly as an individual, sometimes fantastically so, in fact.

Also, I'm sorry Marina, it doesn't look like he thinks there's a unifying rule of understanding :(

Dichotomy: Knowledge and Understanding

I think Mason's dichotomy of knowledge and understanding is very interesting; can one have knowledge without understanding? Or vice versa?

I think it is entirely possible to have knowledge without understanding; one can know that the freeway is busy at 5 p.m. simply by word of mouth, but can not understand the implications unless one has experienced it. Knowledge is, to me (as a working definition), a statement that one takes to be at least tentatively true, and can respond reflexively to other truth statements without being modified. Understanding is much deeper, one must be aware of the underlying axioms from which the item is derived, and how other statements may be logically deduced from it.

Chapter 3

To quickly address a point that is being discussed:
Although Mason does discuss the question of whether knowledge comes before understanding or understanding before knowledge, I don't think that this exploration of cause and effect is one of the central themes in Chapter 3. It's certainly perplexing because on page 39 Mason states, explicitly, that "understanding trumps knowledge." Later, Mason writes that "knowledge required understanding required knowledge," and elsewhere in the chapter he admits that the two concepts are intimately related. On page 40, he also clarifies his statement on page 39 with regard to the superiority of understanding: "questions about the priority of understanding only arise...in contrast with past claims made about knowledge." In other words, Mason seems to be arguing that (I could be misinterpreting this completely) the perceived superiority or importance of developing theories of knowledge in the past has overshadowed the aim of developing theories of understanding and has thus prompted Mason to defend the idea of developing theories of understanding. I think.

I interpreted Mason's argument as follows:

*Modern epistemology is rooted in Christian needs and traditions, and these Christian traditions focused on knowledge. They did so in the following 6 ways:
a. "Beliefs and knowledge required propositions."
b. "Beliefs mattered," and were necessary for salvation.
c. "Beliefs had relevant support."
d. "The support for beliefs provided it with legitimation."
e. "The formulation of creeds was an intrinsically critical activity."
f. "Your beliefs were essentially yours, and this was important." (43).

I understood some of the above characteristics, but not all. Characteristic (a) implies that the criteria for knowledge and truth was stringent (I drew a parallel to Elgin and foundationalism), characteristic (b) implies that the importance of salvation enhanced the importance of characteristic (a), (c) lost me, (d) lost me, (e) lost me, and (f) seems to suggest that knowledge varied from person to person and was subjective. It would be helpful if we discuss a few of these points in class.

In the next section of the chapter, Mason argued that epistemology was rooted in the Christian traditions and attempted to validate this argument by providing an example of how epistemology could be conceptualized by someone who was not Christian. Mason used the example of Spinoza and pointed out that Spinoza did not view knowledge as individual but as "an activity of human beings, who were part of nature" (44).

After describing modern theories of knowledge, Mason suggests that "a theory of knowledge in the Cartesian mold provides a poor model for any account of understanding, to the extent that any comparison is difficult" (45). This, I think, is central to Mason's argument. Instead of trying to sort through which is superior (knowledge or understanding), I think that Mason is instead trying to emphasize the extent to which understanding cannot be "understood" in the same way that knowledge is understood. This is because understanding does not "start from the self," does not have to be "propositional," and does not have to be "legitimated" in the same way that Cartesian knowledge did (45).

At the end of chapter 3, Mason acknowledges that most of the chapter has been "negative" but concludes by arguing that "liberation [of the theory/theories of understanding] from a model of understanding based on epistemology might be beneficial. Instead of looking for a fundamental reductionist theory of understanding, we could simply try to understand it, in its manifold forms" (49). Based on the way that Mason has explored knowledge and understanding, I would tend to agree with his argument that "one size does not fit all." We should thus not try to understanding understanding in quite the same way that epistemologists understood knowledge.

However, Mason's last sentence ("we could simply try to understand it, in its manifold forms"), left me rather perplexed. I think that discussing this last sentence in class would be extremely helpful.

Mason, Ch. 3

Like a few other people have mentioned, the only thing I could think while reading this chapter was, "What came first, the chicken or the egg?". To be honest, I don't really get what the point of this chapter is. It seems like Mason spent the entire chapter three explaining why knowledge was more important in history and that it pushed understanding to the back burner. Then he explains why it shouldn't be this way because there needs to be some kind of understanding of understanding. But then he ends the chapter saying that anything like a "general theory of understanding" would surely be a fantasy (49). So I'm left wondering why we read this chapter. I feel like the argument at the beginning of the chapter was the same at the end. You can't have understanding without knowledge and you can't have knowledge without understanding.

Understanding Knowlege, Knowing Understanding, Understanding meaning, Knowing Understanding etc...

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.

Debateable Chapter 3

Knowledge vs. Understanding, round 1... apparently the chicken and the egg example is fitting for our class. I am placing my bets on knowledge, and will be up to debating that in class tomorrow.

I choose to support this notion because I don't think you need to understand something to obtain knowledge, though I believe you need to know something to understand it. Having said that I'm not sure knowing is worth much without understanding, but I think you can have knowledge about something whenever you happen to come across it, whether or not that is productive or beneficial. What you do with that knowledge is the important thing and that involves the idea of understanding, which can also determine the worth of the knowledge or even if it is actually "knowledge."

Chapter Three

I found Mason's discussion about the history of knowledge and understanding in regards to religion (specifically Christianity) very provocative. I think it is very beneficial to look back and see how the theories of understanding and the theories of knowledge have evolved from then until now. He says that belief was "viewed in terms of content," that beliefs mattered, had relevant support, were legitimate, subjective and meaningful because of the distinction between "genuine and spurious beliefs." (41-42) I agreed with him about most of them, except that religious beliefs are subjective. I went to Catholic school for 13 years and in my religion classes, these beliefs were not subjective at all. They had little to do with personal experience and I had very little right to believe only some or none of the teachings. There was not really a choice involved. I believed all or nothing. Mason says that the point of this religious method was to "enable me to ask, of any belief: Why should I accept that?" and this is where I started to lose him in his argument. It would seem likely that we should always be able to question why we believe something, but I'm not sure how that connect directly with understanding. I'm not sure if Mason is suggesting that understanding comes from questioning our beliefs or our beliefs stem from questioning our understanding of something.

As for the major point of the chapter-- deciding which comes first or which is more important, understanding or knowledge--it seems like it is eternally doomed to be a chicken-egg question. We have to have knowledge in order to understand something, but intrinsically it is impossible to understand something without having a knowledge of a few basic concepts (e.g. language) first. Perhaps this is not a question that even needs to be answered. Or perhaps Mason is right when he says that we can't push understanding to the back burner because we believe that knowledge has to come first. I suppose I'm left questioning WHY knowing whether understanding or knowledge comes first, or is more important than the other, is so important. How will this help us create a theory of understanding or a theory of knowledge?

I thought that Mason's discussion of different objects of understanding was rather interesting. Most of them were straightforward, but I disagree about his insights regarding language. Mason writes that "although language has been widely taken to be a fine exemplar of an object for understanding - not least because rules for its correct use seem temptingly attainable - in some ways it is not an obvious candidate" (14). This is because our native language is "transparent" to us and because misunderstandings can be easily cleared resolved.

I do not think that understanding a language (knowing what a speaker is saying) is understanding language in the deepest sense of the word. Learning one or more languages is not only useful for practical reasons, but more importantly it can help a person realize the extent to which their thoughts and CAPACITY to express certain thoughts or ideas are shaped by language. Language may not be an "obvious candidate" for understanding, but I think that the impact of language on our ability to express ourselves certainly is.

I'd have to say that I really liked how Mason divided different approaches toward understanding into differing categories in an attempt to make some order out of a complex subject. Mason appears to be leaning toward Elgin's side in saying that understanding comes in layers and levels, and that understanding is interconnected between types of understanding. I did have some difficulty getting through the first part of the chapter, however, when he was describing knowing ourselves as compared to knowing others. It's a common psychological slogan that we have to know ourselves before we can know others. I understand that at some point, you might feel like you know enough about another person that you feel satiated in your facts. But I have a harder time believing that at some point, you'd want to be done discovering information about yourself. I don't mean this in an egotistical way or to say that knowing yourself is always a better venture than other pursuits. However, I have a tough time deciding when I would feel that I knew enough about myself.
The pieces we read for Monday had a short discussion talking about how art and science are correlated and should be connected mentally. While I do completely agree with that sentiment, Mason brings up art and science in his first chapter. He talks about how understanding and knowledge are closer in mathematics, but they seem further away in something like art to me. To understand mathematics sounds almost like a misnomer, but understanding a piece of art is something closer to attainable. The two crafts are alike in that formal training can help understanding, that there is skill and detail involved, but since some parts of the sciences and mathematics are devoid of many emotions while carrying out the act, this seems to be where the understandings begin to part. We can say that a piece of art or music really speaks to us, that it elicits feelings and emotions from our psyche, but saying the same about math is harder. We can be excited about the subject itself, but that's not the same.

Understanding and Language

Much of what Mason has said so far seems fairly straightforward. It seems that he is trying to lay some groundwork and will delve deeper into the concept of understanding later. Still, I found a couple of his points interesting and relevant to what we have been talking about in class so far. Mason discusses different things that we try to understand, but then on page fourteen he says, "Naturally, it is possible to limit discussion of understanding explicitly to the understanding of language." He goes on to say that understanding cannot be viewed solely through this lens. Nonetheless, I have noticed several times in class discussion that much of what we think we understand depends on the manner in which we talk about it. A slight tweak in the language used can greatly change the way we understand something or what it means to say that we understand a specific concept or idea. 

I also found interesting Mason's discussion on page twenty-two about how each discipline does not have its own unique method of understanding with which to be matched. This reminded me of our painting project. We are not looking at our topic only through one discipline or way of thinking, but through many. With each added lens, we both add onto and change what we understood before. Maybe strong understanding involves this sort of multiple lens idea.

Thinking about the discussion we had in class today, was wondering if Goodman would believe that there is such a thing as objectively good architecture. He argues that architecture means soemthing and says that it is not only subject to personal interpretation, but McCrickerd clarified that that does not mean that there is no wrong meaning. So, how do we distinguish a wrong interpretation from a right one? At the end of the article he says "A building, more than most works, alters our environment physically; but moreover, as a work of art it may, through various avenues of meaning, inform and reorganize our entire experience." (652) So, if this is true, how can he argue (or McCrickerd state) that there is a wrong way to interpret the meaning of architecture. I feel like so much of the interpretation is personal and can therefor never be independent of our personal experience with the particular building. But, if that's true then how can we argue that someone's interpretation is wrong?

Framing (Museums and Architecture)

"first, that the museum's works can't be circulated or put on open shelves; and second, that while most of those who use a library know how to read, most of those who visit a museum don't know how to see (Goodman)"

I agree with Cameron, do the people running a museum read these articles before planning a layout of a particular exhibit. In my experience with museums (which have so far been purely scientific or naturally historical in nature) I always seem to understand at first glance in a way that is unique to an exhibit. You learn and see more clearly and idea or some aspect of scientific theory in application and practice or by some visual aide, and museums help to do this. In a way, they FRAME the work to make it more easily understood in a particular context thus reducing any ambiguity and concentrating solely on that aspect which is meant to be understood. This unique ability makes me wonder, how do they do it?

"The museum has to function as an institution for the prevention and cure of blindness in order to make works work. And making works work is the museum's major mission (Goodman)"

This idea of framing comes back again, it is necessary to aide understanding. We cannot understand something if we do not first learn how to see it, and also, the way we see works can greatly influence the way we percieve other works in the future, framing not only the work in question but also our view on the worlds outside the work.

"What we see in a museum may profoundly affect what we see when we leave; and this is as true for nonrepresentational as for representational works (Goodman)"

In Elgin's book, she talks about symbols and metaphors which give a better understanding despite percieved inaccuracies or falsitudes, but these symbols help to guide understanding and understanding is our true goal right? I therefore would agree with Goodman that it an important role of the museum to frame works and to "make works work".

What makes works work? How do they influence understanding?

"Works work when by stimulating inquisitive looking, sharpening perception, raising visual intelligence, widening perspectives, bringing out new connections and contrasts, and marking off neglected significant kinds, they participate in the organization and reorganization of experience, and thus in the making and remaking of our worlds"

Works work when they help to inspire the whole picture, and therefore help us to understand every aspect of their subject. This is what understanding is. A great thing about the museum is that it allows us to build apon past experience or understanding to greater "see" or to visualize the works purpose. The museum provides the framework for understanding.

I do not undestand why Goodman points out that we have lost the museum. Does he mean to say that we have lost the museums purpose? Does he mean that because the museum is static and inaccessable it prevents us from accessing works and realizing their true meaning?


How do buildings mean?

Architecture is a unique art because it does not serve to portray its subject or to describe it in some way, however Goodman suggests that buildings an still have meaning and that they can still effect a view on the world.

Is there still a symbolic function?

"we may read of buildings that allude, express, evoke, invoke, comment, quote; that are syntactical, literal, metaphorical, dialectical; that are ambiguous or even contradictory! All these terms, and many more, have to do in one way or another with reference and may help us to grasp what a building means. "

This article brought to mind "The Fountainhead" because the architecture in the book was described in an artistic way, and the buildings with the most meaning were maybe not the ones most conventionally beautiful but they meant something in the way that they melded with landscape and mixed this with functionality and appreciation of materials. This showed a love of building and an appreciation of the natural landscape and natural architecture. These buildings meant something and in the story they helped to aide Rands theory of objectivism.

Mason Chap 1/2

I wonder, as an analytic philosopher, if there is any way that one may examine a position without inducing bias. Mason mentions that many people believe a position may only be criticized from within its field (such as a work of art may only be criticized by another artist). Surely a non-artist would not have the perspective and experiental knowledge that the artist would, but the artist herself would have biases from her own work and area of specialization. For example, an artist may be inclined toward paintings and would so greatest informed and experienced with paintings, but would be biased towards (or against) works that resemble her own, or against works from another sub-discipline (such as classical sculptures).

However, the real question is: does this even matter? According to Lynch it would, but would not for Elgin. I am interested to see where Mason stands!

Mason's First Chapter

I thought Mason's point b was interesting. In it, he examines the human ability to truly understand others around them. He begins by asserting that we are limited by our perceptions: Everything we know can change in an instant depending upon a new development, or a sudden change that forces us to encompass a new facet of character (pg. 8). Furthermore, he states that we may only understand someone based upon "instances" of how we see them, or the roles in which we perceive them, i.e. mother, daughter, friend, etc. This is thought-provoking, as he seems to recognize that our societal roles strongly influence relationships and perceptions. For example, some individuals treat their parents differently than their friends, and this treatment affects their "understanding" of the parents as individuals. The same would go for professors, and so on.

The next paragraph discusses the famous debate between understanding and knowledge (it seems inevitably to come back to this!). To understand, he says is to comprehend what it is to know, as well as what it is you know about yourself.

Goodman & Understanding

Goodman's articles let us further our thoughts of perception and understanding, and brought me back to a section of Elgin's book. Elgin suggested that in order for us to have knowledge and eventually understand something, we can use someone else's thoughts/knowledge of a subject to further our own understanding. She said, and we agreed that every single person does not have time to investigate every single subject, we would obviously be constatnly investigating and never get to revel in our discoveries, plus we'd die before we were fulfilled. So therefore, Elgin noted that we can use information from others to answer some of our own questions, and from that section of the book, I had to ask how we were to decide whom to trust in this, whose knowledge was considered good enough to support our investigation and how were we to divide those who we should believe and whom we shouldn't... ok, so now that I reminded you all of that, I will say that I was reminded of that with these readings because they were very interpretation based. Though this time it was more abotu establishing the intended meaning of an architect or artist and the meaning someone else derived from the building or peice of artwork when they encountered it. In class today, I brought this up, ut we didn't really discuss who's opinion gets validated and whose gets shut down. I'm not sure I agree that some individual's opinions are worth less than someone else's, which is really funny for me to say because I love being right and have been known to tell people they were wrong because they didn't agree with me... maybe I'm learning so much from this class that I've just become toooooooooo accepting of these notions? Anyway, maybe we can give a minute or two to this again.

As for Understanding Understanding, I believe Mason might eventually explain something related to my question, because he has been defining "understanding" and why it is important to note that different people understand differently, sometimes abstractly and sometimes metaphorically (which I am totally all for, I love using metaphors to explain stuff... though sometimes I make it more complicated). I like the emphasis he puts on the metaphor or "seeing" and that goes for the term "reading" as well. I hate to say I don't have any questions from these chapters, since I felt he was defining/explaining things to set us up for more in the chapters to come, but I'm sure that in class I will realize I do have some, so I'll save those for when they pop up.

Art and Understanding

"Here, I am afraid the evil side of elitism looms. Insistence on excellence in works for the museum, and refusal of all compromise with popular taste, are all to the good; for the muscles of the mind must stretch to be strengthened. But giving the impression that the only works worthwhile are those so rare and costly as to be confined to museums and great collections, that there are no good works that people can own and live with-this is one of the worst effects a museum can have. And when works begin to be produced expressly for museums, we reach a stage of utter perversity. For the museum after all is an anomalous and awkward institution made necessary only by the rarity and vulnerability of works that belong elsewhere."

I found this particular passage, in the Goodman essay on museums to be fascinating. I am also in an Art History course this semester, and we are concentrating on the social and political implications of art, as opposed to the strict formal qualities that usually define courses on the history of art. This entire essay resonated with the material that we have covered in that class, but this passage allowed me to draw a connection between the knowledge from that class and this one.

Art is, in my opinion and understanding, an expression of the very essence of the human soul. Whereas there are a myriad of manners of communication, few allow the viewer (or reader, or patron) to connect with the material in such a direct manner. Art is not rooted in scientific, mathematic, or even cultural knowledge; it is much more. Art allows demonstration of understanding. It demands that links be made between the viewer's personal experiences, and the message that the artist is attempting to convey.

So it is, I think Goodman would say, with cognitive achievement. While knowledge is fine and well, understanding is the true measure of accomplishment. So it is with art; formal qualities are important, but the true measure of an artwork's success lies in its ability to communicate with the viewer. There is no reason to think that understanding is such an elite concept that it must be protected within the confines of educational institutions or scientific facilities, much as Goodman suggests that it would be remiss to think that 'good' art can only exist in a museum.

Mon. Readings

I have to say that the museum reading made more sense to me than the building one. I agree with Cameron, that I never thought of museums necessarily as things that could alter perception. I did not see them solely as places of leisure and felt that a person could learn much by going to a museum, but I never thought of them as places that could change the way we viewed the world. I liked what Goodman said about learning to see. "The museum has to function as an institution for the prevention and cure of blindness in order to make works work" (56). I think that much of how a particular work of art (or anything) may alter a person's perception depends on how that person interacts with the work of art, or even to what degree a person "lets" the work of art change them. Yes, I think it is true that some things change us without our knowing or permission, but as Goodman says, we need to know how to see. 

Goodman also discussed two ways of seeing and debates which is better. I at first thought I would agree more with the first, that seeing should involve only looking at the piece of are (or object, or idea) in question. Then I began to think that I cannot look at something and focus only on that thing. Interaction with a piece of art cannot exist without thoughts, ideas or feelings not directly related to the artwork. Still, I think this differs from the next method of seeing that Goodman discusses, that of using outside resources to understand a piece of art. This reminds me of our semester long project, of looking at a topic through several disciplines. I think that there can be a balance. We can look at a piece of art through our own eyes first and then turn to the ideas of others to either reinforce or change our ideas.

In the buildings reading, I think I generally followed the argument that buildings can represent something beyond themselves. Still, the article raised several questions for me. After finishing the article, I still felt like I did not have a very good idea of what make certain buildings mean and others not. I was also confused with the section, "The building is designed to refer explicitly to certain properties of its structure. In other buildings make of columns, beams, frames, and walls, the structure is not thus exemplified at all, serving only practical and perhaps also other symbolic functions" (646). I just never caught the distinction of what made some buildings refer to their properties and others not. I also wondered how much perception plays into all of this, that is, can a building mean for one person and not for another?