Understanding understanding.

It is not unusual for people to mistake having a cherished opinion for having understanding.

Typically, an opinion becomes cherished when it seems to account for the facts and supports what we want to believe anyway.

Real understanding is not like that in that it tends to show that what we want to believe has significant limitations and weaknesses. We know that what we want to believe will always have these limitations and weaknesses because of complimentarity.

This problem is most severe in the human interaction realm. Conservatives believe that they understand the world, and the liberals are just idiots. Liberals believe that they understand the world, and the conservatives just evil.

In both cases, they cherish their own opinions, and ignore those of the other side.

How this is to be overcome by those who wish to really understand is not well known, despite having been well described for a long time.

There are actually two ways or methods that I advocate for ensuring that ones understanding is, in fact, understanding.

The first is known as the Law of Charity.

The Law of Charity states that one must assume the same level of intelligence, honesty, sincerity, etc., that one would ascribe to oneself in supporting a position in the persons supporting the opposing position. In other words, if the opposing party supports their position because they are idiots or corrupt or blind, you do not yet understand.

The second deals with understanding from a standpoint of debate, specifically, ones qualification to debate an issue. Of course, every person should be free to debate an issue whether they understand or not because frequently we learn that we don’t understand an issue in the course of a debate. That said, there is nevertheless a standard that determines whether our debate efforts are part of the learning process, or part of the teaching process. Debate positions that are based on cherished opinion will usually be defeated by positions based on understanding, for the simple reason that the position based on understanding, regardless of which side of an issue it is on, will be argued by someone who can argue both their side of the argument, and the other side of the argument, better than his debate opponent can.

You don’t really understand an issue until you can argue either side of the issue better than the person arguing the other side of the issue can argue that side of the issue.