Understanding Understanding by Richard Mason

Author:Richard Mason [Mason, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

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Chapter Five

Failures of understanding

The thought that human understanding is imperfect has not been uncommon. What is the standard of perfection? Where does it come from? Why should it matter, given that human understanding is, after all, the only understanding that we understand?

The contrast in the past—one of total transparency—must have been God’s understanding, or understanding in heaven. In paradise, Beatrice told Dante, what is held as faith will be “known through itself,” not by demonstration. Strong support was given by a visual image of understanding. As we see dimly and distantly on earth, so in heaven we shall see clearly and directly.

Proofs, the “eyes of the mind,” will no longer be needed, as truth is apprehended directly.1

If this is no longer credible, it might seem that there is not much more to say. We are left with human understanding, which has its own standards, and nothing else. For that matter, the picture of an absolute, perfect perspective is less convincing than it might have seemed in the past. The eye that sees literally everything literally immediately would appear to have the same shortcoming as a map at 100% scale (as explored in a terse fable, “On Exactitude in Science,” by Borges).2 A concept of vision without attention, focus, and selection may be too attenuated to make useful sense. Yet again, this can be brought out by thinking about the auditory alternative. Perfect hearing makes no sense if it means hearing everything as it is, or as it sounds. People could hear better than they do in some respects. It is not pointless to say that in some ways people do not hear as well as dogs (though what they might do with dogs’ hearing is a curious question), but it is surely entirely pointless to 67

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