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I'm not sure I agree. I think what I tried to describe above couldn't be classified as "knowledge" at all. To be honest, I think we (humans) don't understand t

I'm not sure I agree. I think what I tried to describe above couldn't be classified as "knowledge" at all. To be honest, I think we (humans) don't understand this type of understanding very well. Which is somewhat ironic :-) Edit: But thanks for the suggestion about searching for schema, will definitely take a look!

p-christ 4y ago
Understanding is just knowledge of how or why something works
- cloogshicer 4y ago
  Intuitively, I don't believe it's that simple. But I'd love to learn more about it.
  - tighter_wires 4y ago
    There may be more to it but at a minimum understanding usually requires you to remember a how or why, so understanding is rooted in memory as well. Perhaps also the memory of a broader cognitive context of the world and how a given objects fit in that context. Without memory there would be no capacity for understanding. Have you ever gained a solid understanding of a complex topic after a lot of study? When you start to forget the relevant details of the context you’ve created, your understanding fades as well. “Understanding“ is just a complex function of memory to a large degree.
svnt 4y ago
The keyword embodied may be fruitful — there is a lot of noise around the term but embodied understanding is closer to what you want, I think. You may have to relax some ideas about how things work for a while in order to absorb/integrate it. The knowledge defined in the article is very rational and reductionist in its presentation. I don’t mean that derogatorily, but it does mean it can’t account for all the emergent features of our existence. The reductionist approach can be useful as a set of signposts for locating reliable mechanistic constraints.
- cloogshicer 4y ago
  Thank you for that keyword! A quick search brought me to the wikipedia article [1], which sounds quite promising. I agree completely with your analysis of the article by the way. Beautifully said! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

p-christ 4y ago

Understanding is just knowledge of how or why something works

cloogshicer 4y ago
Intuitively, I don't believe it's that simple. But I'd love to learn more about it.
- tighter_wires 4y ago
  There may be more to it but at a minimum understanding usually requires you to remember a how or why, so understanding is rooted in memory as well. Perhaps also the memory of a broader cognitive context of the world and how a given objects fit in that context. Without memory there would be no capacity for understanding. Have you ever gained a solid understanding of a complex topic after a lot of study? When you start to forget the relevant details of the context you’ve created, your understanding fades as well. “Understanding“ is just a complex function of memory to a large degree.

svnt 4y ago

The keyword embodied may be fruitful — there is a lot of noise around the term but embodied understanding is closer to what you want, I think. You may have to relax some ideas about how things work for a while in order to absorb/integrate it. The knowledge defined in the article is very rational and reductionist in its presentation. I don’t mean that derogatorily, but it does mean it can’t account for all the emergent features of our existence. The reductionist approach can be useful as a set of signposts for locating reliable mechanistic constraints.

cloogshicer 4y ago
Thank you for that keyword! A quick search brought me to the wikipedia article [1], which sounds quite promising. I agree completely with your analysis of the article by the way. Beautifully said! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition