Vladimir Nesov wrote:
I think [having a general (causal) model] is a good fit for "understanding". When you understand a phenomenon, you can model it in many different contexts (environments), including those never encountered before neither by the phenomenon, nor by you observing the phenomenon. Rote learning doesn't generalize, it just represents isolated data points.
Generally, I agree. However, rote learning can be a part of modeling. We learn arithmetic by rote, but then apply it to non-rote models, for example. Rote learning can provide parts of the model. Taken to extremes (as in an AI program), rote can conceivably provide everything.
On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 11:36 PM, Harry Chesley <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I'm not at all sure that understanding much be active. It may be > that a text book on physics understands physics. But it doesn't do > anything with that understanding, which is how we're used to seeing > understanding expressed, so we don't think of it as understanding. > A book is a "request for understanding", it can be converted into a model if read by someone. I think about meaning as a target of optimization process permitted by a given model of environment. When you have a question, it creates a process of arriving at an answer, and so the meaning of this question is in the shape of your activity about finding the answer, in the target of this process. If it is expected that a book gets read, it is a part of optimization process in the model that anticipates that. If book is currently burning, and is expected to be reduced to ashes, it is not a part of such process and it has no understanding or meaning relevant to what's written in it.
Here and above, I think you need to distinguish between understanding and expressing or using understanding. You seem to be saying that understanding exists only when being expressed or used, and I wouldn't agree with that, though the point is subtle enough that it probably doesn't matter, since unused understanding is functionally irrelevant.
You say "a book...can be converted into a model if read by someone," but what does reading do other than convert from one representation (printed words) to another (neural connections). (It also presumably connects the new knowledge to previously acquired knowledge, but that prior knowledge /could/ have been in the book too.) The only difference is that the new representation is more ready to be used.
Then you get asked a question and the neural mechanism goes to work and uses the knowledge to produce an answer showing your understanding. But you still had the understanding before you used it, and you still have it now even though you're not using that part of your brain at the moment.
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