Do we understand or do we perceive?

My sister randomly posed an interesting question to me recently: ‘Do we understand or do we perceive?’ When someone tells you something, you might reply, ‘I understand’. But do you really or do you just think you do? How do we know if we really understand what someone else is trying to convey? In case you’re wondering, my sister’s background is in philosophy.

To be clear, I don’t think we should live our lives constantly doubting whether we really understand what others are telling us. Nearly always, our inference is good enough. But as a thought experiment, I find this fascinating.

Failing to accurately articulate what we mean

One problem with true understanding could be failing to articulate what we’re thinking clearly. That doesn’t necessarily mean you aren’t generally a good communicator, since communication is also highly dependent on your audience. Communicate a highly technical idea to a colleague and to your mother, and you’ll likely get very different levels of understanding, assuming your mother is not an expert in that area. Morality can also be hard to justify. A lot of people have a deep sense of what’s right and wrong, usually stemming from their upbringing. With the classic trolley problem¹, a lot of people can have strong conviction in their belief, but may be unable to articulate why.

Consider a scenario where you’re trying to explain something to someone, but you can’t find the right words to say. Bizarrely, the other person seems to understand what you’re trying to convey. They can only go off what you have said, as well as their own thoughts and experiences. That might work well for people from a similar background as you, such as your family and friends.

I don’t think you understand

You may have also experienced encounters where another person thinks they understand, but you don’t think they do.

That communication barrier can be frustrating, but it goes to show that a large part of communication is shaped by our own thoughts, feelings and experiences. This is a common problem: a white person may never be able to fully understand what it’s like to be a black person living in the USA. Similarly, we men may struggle to truly understand what it’s like to be a woman and experience the daily sexism they face.

We can try to see another’s viewpoint, but it’s hard if we’re always filling in the blanks in an attempt to understand. Asking questions and trying to make as few assumptions as possible helps, but I think this is very difficult in practice.

What about when one person finishes your sentence? Or both you and someone else come to the same conclusion? Those are good arguments, but that doesn’t mean that both you and the other person are on the exact same wavelength.

In truth, I could be wrong — perhaps real understanding does exist. I don’t have a strong stance either way, but it’s an interesting idea to think about.

¹ The trolley problem is a thought experiment where a runaway train is on course to hit and kill five people. You’re watching and you can intervene by diverting the train onto a different track that will kill one person instead of the original five. It’s interesting because different people have different ethical views that would affect what the best course of action is (to act or not). You can read more about it on Wikipedia.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash