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From the book Les, Z. and Les, M. (2008) Shape Understanding System: The First
Steps toward the Visual Thinking Machines. Berlin: Springer.
When the
existing knowledge based systems are build based on the results of the
scientific discoveries in the domain of psychology, cognitive science,
computer science or AI, our approach, presented in this book, is based on
the results of philosophical investigations of such thinkers as Locke,
Berkeley, or Kant.
Understanding and philosophy
Understanding
appears as the result of the thinking process. Understanding
is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such
as a person, a situation or a message whereby one is able to think about it
and use concepts to deal adequately with that object. In order to understand
and solve a problem there is a need to engage thinking process. However, in
some cases thinking does not lead to understanding. Understanding means
knowing what is meant or intended by an utterance, a gesture or a
situation. Using an operational or behavioral
definition of understanding, we can say that somebody who reacts
appropriately to Y understands Y. For example, I understand English if I
correctly obey commands given in that language. This approach, however, may
not provide an adequate definition. A computer can easily be programmed to
react appropriately to simple commands.
Understanding
is closely related to cognition and in many cases both terms have very
similar meaning. For example, in the cognitive
model the process of introverted thinking is thought to represent
understanding through cause and effect relationships or correlations. One
can construct a model of a system by observing correlations between all the
relevant properties.
Understanding
is often thought of as a special kind of seeing [1]. In common language very
often instead of statement “I understand” people say “I see”. Also thinkers
pointed out into connection between seeing and understanding. For example,
Plato described the grasping of the forms or ideas as a kind of vision -
our mental eye (onus, reason) [2]. The eye of the soul is
endowed with intellectual intuition and can see an idea, an essence, and an
object that belongs to the intelligible world. Once we have managed to see
it, to grasp it, we know this essence and we can see it in the light of
truth.
One aspect
of thinking and understanding is the acquisition and utilization of
knowledge in order to explain the world and to perform complex tasks.
Another one is connected with application of knowledge in the problem
solving process. Some people believe that knowledge is the simple awareness
of bits of information and understanding is the awareness of the
connectedness of this information. However, it is thinking during understanding
process which allows knowledge to be put in use. In order to be able
effectively utilize the knowledge during solving the difficult problems
subject need to have well developed problem-solving skills. Problem-solving
skills comprise wide range of competencies such as the capacity to
understand problems situated in novel settings, to identify relevant information,
to represent possible alternatives or solutions, to develop solution
strategies, and to solve problems and communicate the obtained results.
It is understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible
beings, and gives him all the advantage and dominion which he has over
them. Understanding appears as the result of the thinking process and can
be the object of the scientific inquires. Locke has no doubt that understanding
can be studied like anything else: “we can observe its object and the ways
in which it operates upon them” he wrote. Understanding that is often
thought of as cognition involves processes such as learning, problem
solving, perception, intuition, and reasoning, and requires abilities such
as intelligence. Understanding that is based on
knowledge is often connected with interpretation or disclosing meaning of
the language and the concept is the key element of understanding process.
Understanding
and thought were topics of many philosophical thinkers such as Plato,
Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, Laibnitz or Gadamer and were regarded in the context of the origins
of human knowledge. The traditional Augustinian theory explained the
cognition as the result of a divine illumination and was based on innate
ideas. This
Neo-Platonic view was that an essence of created things was 'participations'
of the divine essence. God, in contemplating them, does nothing but
contemplate Himself. According to Aquinas, the direct object of
human intellectual knowledge is the form abstracted from matter, which is
the principle of individuation, and known through the universal concept.
The senses apprehend the individual thing but the mind apprehends it only
indirectly, as represented in an image or phantasm. There is no
intellectual intuition of the individual thing as such. Scotus
discarded the traditional Augustinian-Franciscan theory of a special divine
illumination and held, with Aquinas, that Aristotelian doctrine of the
abstraction of the universal can explain the genesis of human knowledge
without it being necessary to invoke either innate ideas or a special
divine illumination.
The
fundamental principles of Locke's thought concerning understanding are
presented in “An Essay Concerning Human Understanding” (1690). This essay
was the culmination of twenty years of Lock’s reflection on the origins of
human knowledge. The Essay is divided into four books; the first is
a polemic against the doctrine of innate principles and ideas. The second
deals with ideas, the third with words, and the fourth with knowledge. Lock
did not distinguished between cognition and understanding. According to
Locke, what we know is always properly understood as the relation between
ideas. He devoted much of the Essay to an extended argument that all of our
ideas—simple or complex—are ultimately derived from experience. The
consequence of this empiricist approach is that our knowledge is severely
limited in its scope and certainty. Our knowledge of material substances,
for example, depends heavily on the secondary qualities by reference to
which we name them, while their real inner natures derive from the primary
qualities of their insensible parts.
Hume’s An Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding appeared in 1748. The central themes of the book are that
very little of what we think we know can actually be derived from any idea
that there are actual necessary connections between observed phenomena. We
assume that certain things are connected just because they commonly occur
together, but a genuine knowledge of any connection is mere habit of
thought. So, a severe scepticism is the only
rational view of the world. Hume’s investigations into human understanding
lead him to doubts. He asks on what grounds we base our judgments and investigate their rational justification. Finding
certain inconsistencies in our normal procedures, for instance, that our belief
in necessary connection is not rationally justified, Hume is led to a kind
of consequent doubt of our mental faculties.
Descartes
claimed that "natural light" of understanding is a faculty
created by God [46]. We come to know not only
created eternal truths but uncreated truth: that God exists, that God is
not a deceiver, that God is immutable, a necessary being, causa sui. But God is not subject to the
limits of our understanding, and we only have access to these uncreated
truths through a faculty given to us by Him. If our understanding seeks
some unconditional verification of God's existence and truthfulness,
through means outside the scope of God's creative will, it seeks in vain.
Descartes initiates a critique of the understanding itself. It is
immediately aimed at "eternal truths", that is, mathematical
truths which for Descartes are properly truths of the understanding.
According
to Kant understanding as a one of the higher faculties of knowledge, in general, can be defined as
the faculty of rules. Ideas, as
Kant argues in the Transcendental Dialectic, are a priori concepts
whose source lies in pure reason alone. Their only legitimate theoretical
use is to regulate the understanding's cognition of objects: reason sets
down the conditions under which the understanding's activity will have
achieved its ideal completion in the systematic interconnection of its
cognitions, i.e., in an ultimate science. Reason thereby offers the
understanding of a rule against which any actually achieved system of
science must be measured. Because human finitude makes it impossible in
principle for any actual system to attain the ideal maximum, reason also
spurs the understanding on towards ever new discoveries and reorganizations.
Natorp claims that the directedness towards
a goal is implied by “method” that illuminates one of two senses in
which his philosophy is idealistic, namely that science (and the other
activities of culture) are guided by regulative ideas or limit-concepts.
Given an object of scientific cognition, the cognition is conceived as a
process never “definitively concluded,” but rather, “every true concept is
a new question, none is a final answer”. Natorp
comments: “Just this is the meaning of the thing in itself as X:
the infinite task”. In other words, the thing in itself is the ideal of an
object exhaustively determined by concepts, that
is, completely known. As with Kant, however, our cognitive finitude means
that the process of conceptual determination can only approach this ideal
asymptotically. This pursuit of total determination, what Natorp calls “method,” is the pursuit of science. The
hypothesis as law or groundwork is for Natorp the
transcendental foundation for scientific experience, i.e., for the activity
of legislating and thus rationally understanding the phenomena.
Hermeneutics
started to emphasize the role of language in understanding. In hermeneutics
understanding is the inversion of a speech act, during which the thought
which was the basis of the speech must become conscious. Every utterance
has a dual relationship to the totality of the language and to the whole
thought of its originator, then understanding also consists of the two
moments, of understanding the utterance as derived from language, and as a
fact in the thinker. Hermeneutics is the art of understanding particularly
the written discourse of another person correctly. A central principle of Gadamer’s hermeneutics is that language conditions all
understanding. The phenomenon of understanding shows the universality of
human linguistically as a limitless medium which carries everything within
it. Not only the ‘culture’ which has been handed down to us through
language, but absolutely everything because everything is included in the realm
of understanding. Theorists of language focus on the Mind/Language
connection when they consider understanding to be the cornerstone concept,
holding, for instance, that an account of meaning for a given language is
simply an account of what constitutes the ability to understand it. Many philosophers
such as Locke
or Frege have
been attracted to the view that understanding is a matter of associating
the correct ideas or concepts with words. Others have equated understanding
with knowing the requirements for accurate use of words and sentences. Wittgenstein find the key to understanding
in one’s ability to discern the communicative goals of speakers and
writers, or more directly in one’s ability to ‘pass’ linguistically,
without censure. Nietzsche puts forward the hypothesis that scientific
concepts are chains of metaphors hardened into accepted truths. On this
account, metaphor begins when a nerve stimulus is copied as an image, which
is then imitated in sound, giving rise, when repeated, to the word, which
becomes a concept when the word is used to designate multiple instances of
singular events. Conceptual metaphors are thus lies because they equate
unequal things, just as the chain of metaphors moves from one level to
another. Hegel's problem with the repetition of the “this” and the “now” is
thus expanded to include the repetition of instances across discontinuous
gaps between kinds and levels of things. Today’s scientists, however, found
the limitation of the linguistic theories. The power of a living language
is exceeded by the power of our thinking. If we compare the power of a
living language with the logical language then we will find that logic is
even poorer. Therefore it seems to be impossible to guarantee a one-to-one
mapping of problems and a model using a mathematical or logical language.
It can be shown that it is very often extremely difficult to appropriately
assign semantic contents to logical symbols.
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