Acquiring a database versus creation of understanding

[coberst]

Acquiring a database versus creation of understanding

The success of our production and consumption society is structured upon our highly rationalized capacity to develop, organize and utilize knowledge designed to encourage individuals to become highly specialized experts in narrow specialties. Our industrial base demands experts who require little understanding except in very narrow specialties.

Most parents desire that their children graduate from higher education with a credential entitling them to a good job with a high salary. The student of higher education in the United States graduates with a large database of specialized knowledge designed to permit that graduate to immediately fit into a large organization of specialized professionals.

Our Colleges and Universities have successfully met the demands of society and are the envy of the world. Higher education has learned to produce graduates with a large database of highly specialized knowledge.

Unfortunately the intrinsic value of education has been lost as a result. We have facilitated the maximization of production and consumption at the cost of losing contact with the original value of education.

I do not think that efficient assimilation of information into knowledge is our problem; I think our problem is creating meaning from what we do know.

It appears to me that humans have a great propensity to acquire knowledge but a miniscule capacity for understanding the meaning of that acquired knowledge. I would liken the basic human cognitive nature to be similar to that displayed by the United States Intelligence Agency in the 9/11 fiasco. We had the dots but did not have the capacity to connect the dots. Our educational system displays a vast capacity to graduate individuals with extensive databases but little understanding.

I would say that the intrinsic value of education is wisdom. I would define wisdom as a sensitive synthesis of broad knowledge, deep understanding and solid judgment. Our universities produce individuals capable of developing a great technology but lacking the wisdom to manage the world modified by that technology. Higher education has become a commodity.

The relationship of sex to love as compared with the relationship of knowledge to understanding might help to clarify my point.

Sex and knowledge are easily acquired and easily forgotten. Love and understanding requires an intense investment of the person. Sex can alienate, thus making love more problematic; just as extensive specialized knowledge, which leads to intellectual arrogance, can alienate, thus making understanding problematic. One can get sex but one must create love. Love and understanding are something to seek and work for and may or may not happen. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; “Understanding is a kind of ecstasy.”

When we speak of a cornucopia of information and our attempt to assimilate that info in a coherent manner so as to facilitate our survival I wonder if we might not be missing something important. Our DNA was developed over millions of years based upon the prevailing environment. We have, as a result of our very successful rationalization of knowledge acquisition developed a far different universe than what our genes have prepared us for.

All of our fundamental capabilities make it possible for us to assimilate and organize great deals of information and to react to that knowledge in ways to assure survival in the world of the past. However, what do we do in this very different world of technology?

Conversion of input stimuli into knowledge was sufficient before but perhaps our future success in the world indicates that we may have to seriously modify our response to the world. Up to this point we have been able to successfully navigate a world where knowledge with little understanding is sufficient. Perhaps such a situation is reaching a climax. Perhaps we must adjust to becoming much more adept at understanding.

The success of our production and consumption society is structured upon our highly rationalized capacity to develop, organize and utilize knowledge; this process is designed to encourage individuals to become highly specialized experts in narrow specialties. Our industrial base demands experts who require little understanding except in very narrow specialties.

 

[DrumR]

Acquiring a database versus creation of understanding

I do not think that efficient assimilation of information into knowledge is our problem; I think our problem is creating meaning from what we do know.

It appears to me that humans have a great propensity to acquire knowledge but a miniscule capacity for understanding the meaning of that acquired knowledge. I would liken the basic human cognitive nature to be similar to that displayed by the United States Intelligence Agency in the 9/11 fiasco. We had the dots but did not have the capacity to connect the dots. Our educational system displays a vast capacity to graduate individuals with extensive databases but little understanding.

I believe that the above 9/11 illustration is a poor example. I present the arguments below.

Having the data available and having the capability to perform the necessary functions on the available data does one little good if one does not have the permissions to access that data and/or one does not have the permissions to execute the required functions.

I am of the opinion that this statement also fails in that the breadth and depth of knowledge imparted by the USA educational system has been shown to have declined when compared to that of 60-70 years ago. It appears that there exists a trend of where to find the information is taking precedence. This is much like having the pointers to the data versus the data itself.

Additionally, mental blocks are known to exist. The data may be there, yet is inaccessible temporarily or permanently - as in Amnesia.

 

[Dogbrain]

I do not think that efficient assimilation of information into knowledge is our problem; I think our problem is creating meaning from what we do know.

It appears to me that humans have a great propensity to acquire knowledge but a miniscule capacity for understanding the meaning of that acquired knowledge.

My study of cognition and neuroscience, plus the work of modern epistemologists, has led me to the opposite conclusion. If anything, we are incapable of "assimilating information" without "creating meaning" in order to do so. We only "assimilate information" by fitting it into the broader context of "meaning" as each of us has "meaning". The "acquired knowledge" can only exist in the human mind by having "meaning". Indeed, knowledge is not just sensory data. Knowledge exists if and only if we have connected some sensory data to our own individual web of meaning. There is, in reality, no such thing as an "unconnected fact".

Of course, one can raise the spectre of incorrect conclusions to "prove" that we cannot derive meaning. Such a dog-and-pony show is the intellectual equivalent to a magician's misdirection. Outside-of-self "correctness" of outcome, or "truth value", to use a more formal term, is an entirely different question from "meaning", and it is one that is often debated as to whether or not it can be known at all in the first place.

For example, how does one distinguish knowledge from correct opinion? Let us say that Socrates was walking down the road to go see Alcibiades. He comes to an intersection at which a man is standing. Since Socrates is not familiar with the neighborhood, he asks the stranger where the house of Alcibiades might be. The stranger throws out his left arm, straight as can be. Socrates takes the indicated road and soon comes to Alcibiades's house. Socrates relates the event to Alcibiades, who informs him that the stranger is a blind, deaf mute, who is prone to spastic movements. What Socrates took as "instruction" or "knowledge" turns out to have been a fortuitous "random" event. In other words, Socrates thought he had knowledge of Alcibiades's location, but actually did not--even if the results were the same as having had the knowledge. How are we to distinguish such matters on a daily basis?

I would liken the basic human cognitive nature to be similar to that displayed by the United States Intelligence Agency in the 9/11 fiasco. We had the dots but did not have the capacity to connect the dots.

We had the capacity. We prohibited the connectors from doing their work.

Our educational system displays a vast capacity to graduate individuals with extensive databases but little understanding.

It has been my experience that the opposite is true. They have a great deal of "understanding" and woefully deficient databases. Garbage in gives garbage out.

 

[coberst]

Dogbrain

Do we perceive it because it is meaningful? Yes! However meaningfulness grows parallel with comprehension.

We can comprehend only what we are prepared to comprehend. First we must be aware of a matter. Then we must become conscious of this awareness. Next we can begin to gain knowledge of this matter. We can then begin to create new meaning by organizing our knowledge in new and meaningful ways. This final step is often called understanding.

How does the man with agnosia (loss of ability to perceive the familiar due to brain damage) manage on the street? Quoting such an individual “On the sidewalk all things are slim—those are people; in the middle of the street, everything is very noisy, bulky, tall—that can be buses, cars.”

Rudolf Arnheim says, regarding agnosia, that “Many people use their unimpaired sense of sight to no better advantage during much of the day.” How can this be true? I suspect it is true because many of us have such a very narrow range of familiar objects that have any meaning to us. Our narrow intellectual interests leave us with a very narrow world of reality because we perceive only what is meaningful.

Our emotions are one source of meaning. Occasionally, while walking in the woods, some movement in the underbrush will cause my blood to “run cold”. Was that a source of danger? I suspect that to most animals without the ability to create abstract concepts all perceptions are those induced by emotions (we also call them instincts). I can be alerted by a mouse darting across the floor well on the peripheral fringes of my vision while I am busy concentrating on something else because animals survive based upon their response to movement.

Humans, however, can create an abstract concept, which means that we can create a virtual world on top of the world directly created by Mother Nature. Mother Nature has prepared us through emotion to be very aware of movement pattern but Mother Nature has not prepared us for dealing with the world of abstract concepts.

We have placed into the hands of ordinary people the extraordinary power of technology; it is this virtual world, where technology is dominating and grave danger lurks, for which Mother Nature has not prepared us.

Quotes from Art and Visual Perception: A psychology of the Creative Eye Rudolf Arnheim

 

[Dogbrain]

Well, then, in that case, we might as well just push all the buttons and go up in a gigantic conflagration. If the world were as hopeless as you present it to be, then there is no point in going on.

 

[coberst]

Well, then, in that case, we might as well just push all the buttons and go up in a gigantic conflagration. If the world were as hopeless as you present it to be, then there is no point in going on.

"When I was a child I spoke as a child
I understood as a child I thought as a child;
but when I became a man I put away childish things."
I Cor. xiii. 11

Children go out to play but adults must accept the responsibiliy of citizenship in a democracy.