Understanding

From EvaluationWiki

Comprehension, insight. Often mistakenly thought to be one of the goals of evaluation. To see why this is not true, we need to explicate the notion of understanding a little. Understanding is the other face of cognition, alongside knowledge; for example, the goals of science are often said to be to increase our knowledge and understanding of the world. The vehicle for conveying understanding is explanation, just as the vehicle for conveying facts is description (supplemented by classification and generalization). This is as true in science as it is in everyday life. Now, how can one define understanding? Perhaps the best way is by asking three generally useful focusing questions: (i) What counts as proof that someone does understand something?; (ii) What counts as proof that someone does not really understand something?; and (iii) What distinguishes understanding from mere knowledge? It would take a long essay even to try to answer these questions fully, but some possibly useful hints at answers are suggested here. (i) When we are testing for understanding of (say) the phenomenon X, we look for the ability to answer a considerable range of questions about it that deal with its relation to other phenomena; that is, we look for evidence that X is now integrated into a large knowledge structure of matters that are understood. What counts as a 'knowledge structure,' and what counts as 'integration' varies with the type of phenomenon that X is. Three very important types are: (a) scientific theories about X; or (b) comprehensive collections of causal connections to and from X2, for physical/biological phenomena; and (c) the nexus of reasons for X, or the complex of linguistic and psychological knowledge that incorporates the meaning/significance of X, when X is a voluntary action or choice. (ii) Proof of non-understanding, in the physical examples, is exemplified by giving correlations instead of causes; or by merely giving a different description of X (perhaps by using a difference vocabulary). In the psychological case, non-understanding is illustrated by giving a set of etymological accounts of the terminology in X, instead of reasons for doing X; or by giving what is really just a jargonistic description of the choice X. (iii) The contrast between understanding X and mere knowledge of X is illustrated by contrasting "knowing that it's someone's birthday," an example of knowing a simple fact, with "understanding why s/he doesn't want it mentioned that it's their birthday," an example of understanding something via knowing how it fits in with a complex of other knowledge about her and/or people like her. These contrasts all point the same way: understanding is a process of linking X into a complex network of pre-existing knowledge, what we might call a three-dimensional location operation, by contrast with the one-dimensional processes of description or measurement, or even with the two-dimensional universe of rich or 'thick' description, which includes classificatory/diagnostic and evaluative descriptions. Contrary to the neo-positivists, understanding is not provided by deriving the phenomenon to be explained from a general law; that merely generalizes what is not understood, another two-dimensional excursion. However, understanding can be provided by derivation from a complex theory (which is a quite different logical entity from a generalization or a set of them). A theory may contain and explain laws; and it may also be derived from a deep understanding of the motivations and meanings of what the subject perceived. The neo-positivists always thought that 'explaining the way to the post office' or 'explaining what Marx meant by calling religion the opiate of the masses' was a completely different use of the term 'explaining' from its use in science; but on the present account, these uses are exactly the same. So both sides in the methodological wars had part of the story; but both oversimplified what they had, and overgeneralized from it. From all this, there is an important conclusion for evaluation, which is that evaluating something is, by definition, determining something that may be important about it, a fact or facts about it-evaluative facts-concerning its value, but it is a long way from coming to understand it. So the fundamental assumption behind the theory-driven model of evaluation involves a logical error; explanation is not part of the task of evaluation.