The Helen Keller passage is such a perfect illustration. That moment at the well-house captures exactly what machines can’t do which is connect a symbol to the felt reality behind it. Thank you for writing this. It’s the clearest case I’ve seen for why understanding is a distinctly human act.
Thank you for your kind words, and I appreciate the sentiment of being proudly human. If you want to go a little deeper on Helen Keller's cognitive emergence, I talk about it in some detail in this podcast, starting around the 20 minute mark: https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/teachers-dream-of-a-ha-moments
I don't consider myself a person of faith, but there is something that I keep coming back to about AI which is a lack of wonder and awe. My brother, a hunter, remarked that last summer he was hiking and spotted some deer tracks that stopped at a spot with a beautiful view and indicated a pause in locomotion. He noticed there was no vegetation so the deer didn't appear to have stopped to browse. My brother thought perhaps, maybe, the deer stopped simply to admire the view on to the Atlantic Ocean.
Was he anthropomorphizing the deer? Maybe. But it moves me to my core to think that type of wonder, curiosity and amazement is shared across living carbon-based species and AI, can, well, suck it.
I'm giving a talk this fall on Plato, Aristotle, and the types of knowledge that AI can impart, which are much narrower than most people realize. Hitting lots of these themes. Will be sure to quote you!
[I am sorry my response is on the long side.] I really enjoyed reading this piece about why understanding is so important. And I want to emphasize the collaborative aspect of it, the connection between one human and another. You note at the end, "What is indisputable is that once Helen Keller understood the idea of words, she was able to engage in a discourse with the world, and with us. Her thoughts are still here today for us to marvel in." Understanding is in part the connection between the human who created something in language and their interlocutor. I just finished reading the fantastic book _The Emperor of All Maladies_, Siddhartha Mukherjee's moving and deep biography of cancer. Do you know how he ends this big book? He writes about a patient who succumbed to cancer, and whose brother tells the author that his sister "would have loved, admired, and understood your book." In what way? Mukherjee continues: "Understood. A strange word. A word that signals a desire to know--not just about patients, scientists, and doctors but about history, about the birth, growth, and future of a discipline. That evening, somehow, Germaine had intuited that _Emperor_ would be much more than a personal journal. She understood what I wanted to understand. This was the best praise I have ever received about this book." I think that the author says here that understanding is that human desire to ask questions and embark on imaginative and emotive journeys that help us make some sense of the world AND to tell others about it, to connect with them. This is what good teachers work to do in classrooms, too.
Lots of great points here. I like your example of the human connection between Keller and Sullivan that led to learning/understanding. I strongly emphasize this type of bond between teacher and student--one that AI cannot achieve--in my recent article: https://mattspivey.substack.com/p/keeping-humans-in-the-humanities
I applaud your description of the messy thing that is "understanding" but I'll offer the caveat that what you write about only applies to aspects of teaching that address declarative knowing/knowledge. There is a lot more involved in understanding when we look at subjects which involve procedural knowledge/knowing - like my field, 2nd lang. learning or say music, dance, sports and many more. Understanding does involve the "soul" McGilchrest has a nice lecture on that topic. Knowing is both external and internal, tacit and very personal.
Thanks David, I agree that "knowledge" is another Big Juicy Word that defies simple definition. With understanding, well I agree with Michael Pershan's view expressed above, that the conceptual should accompany the procedural, and I think that's true for the subjects you list, too.
"it’s why procedural and conceptual knowledge have to happen in tandem. You can’t first learn all the procedures and then learn the concepts later.” Like I said, understanding is messy. Many "greats" would disagree and so many others who "lived" their understanding, not knowing a wit about the conceptual knowledge of their subject. Read Polyani's "Personal Knowledge" it should top of any educator's bookshelf. He says - "We can know more than we can tell" . Even someone so embedded into the hallways of conservative education Ken Robinson rued that education was too conceptual, about "knowing about" and not "doing how" and all just an exercise "from the neck up". Think about creative writing workshops - do they work? I think they are just an exercise of going through the motions - you learn to write creatively by writing, not all the knowledge thereof ... and to end my screed (apologies - running to a debate class) - Earl the Pearl Washington was asked how he makes such fantastic plays. Do you practice them? Do you know what you are going to do (conception)? He replied, Hell No, I just do. If I don't know, they don't know and then they can't do nothing about it."
It's notable to me that most of the examples of tacit knowledge primarily involve physical activities (riding a bike, solving a jigsaw puzzle, shooting a basketball) rather than mental activity. And I don't know which "greats" you're alluding to but my money is on Michael Pershan being able to out-teach them with kids any day of the week.
The Helen Keller passage is such a perfect illustration. That moment at the well-house captures exactly what machines can’t do which is connect a symbol to the felt reality behind it. Thank you for writing this. It’s the clearest case I’ve seen for why understanding is a distinctly human act.
Thank you for your kind words, and I appreciate the sentiment of being proudly human. If you want to go a little deeper on Helen Keller's cognitive emergence, I talk about it in some detail in this podcast, starting around the 20 minute mark: https://buildcognitiveresonance.substack.com/p/teachers-dream-of-a-ha-moments
Thanks, I'll give that a listen fos sure!
I don't consider myself a person of faith, but there is something that I keep coming back to about AI which is a lack of wonder and awe. My brother, a hunter, remarked that last summer he was hiking and spotted some deer tracks that stopped at a spot with a beautiful view and indicated a pause in locomotion. He noticed there was no vegetation so the deer didn't appear to have stopped to browse. My brother thought perhaps, maybe, the deer stopped simply to admire the view on to the Atlantic Ocean.
Was he anthropomorphizing the deer? Maybe. But it moves me to my core to think that type of wonder, curiosity and amazement is shared across living carbon-based species and AI, can, well, suck it.
What a wonderful little story, thanks for sharing. I choose to believe the deer had a moment of wonder. And I know we humans can!
I'm giving a talk this fall on Plato, Aristotle, and the types of knowledge that AI can impart, which are much narrower than most people realize. Hitting lots of these themes. Will be sure to quote you!
Thanks so much Campbell, and keep us posted on that talk!
[I am sorry my response is on the long side.] I really enjoyed reading this piece about why understanding is so important. And I want to emphasize the collaborative aspect of it, the connection between one human and another. You note at the end, "What is indisputable is that once Helen Keller understood the idea of words, she was able to engage in a discourse with the world, and with us. Her thoughts are still here today for us to marvel in." Understanding is in part the connection between the human who created something in language and their interlocutor. I just finished reading the fantastic book _The Emperor of All Maladies_, Siddhartha Mukherjee's moving and deep biography of cancer. Do you know how he ends this big book? He writes about a patient who succumbed to cancer, and whose brother tells the author that his sister "would have loved, admired, and understood your book." In what way? Mukherjee continues: "Understood. A strange word. A word that signals a desire to know--not just about patients, scientists, and doctors but about history, about the birth, growth, and future of a discipline. That evening, somehow, Germaine had intuited that _Emperor_ would be much more than a personal journal. She understood what I wanted to understand. This was the best praise I have ever received about this book." I think that the author says here that understanding is that human desire to ask questions and embark on imaginative and emotive journeys that help us make some sense of the world AND to tell others about it, to connect with them. This is what good teachers work to do in classrooms, too.
Lots of great points here. I like your example of the human connection between Keller and Sullivan that led to learning/understanding. I strongly emphasize this type of bond between teacher and student--one that AI cannot achieve--in my recent article: https://mattspivey.substack.com/p/keeping-humans-in-the-humanities
Thansk for your kind words. Michael Pershan has another quote I like, a bit saltier: "No one gives a shit about learning from a robot."
I applaud your description of the messy thing that is "understanding" but I'll offer the caveat that what you write about only applies to aspects of teaching that address declarative knowing/knowledge. There is a lot more involved in understanding when we look at subjects which involve procedural knowledge/knowing - like my field, 2nd lang. learning or say music, dance, sports and many more. Understanding does involve the "soul" McGilchrest has a nice lecture on that topic. Knowing is both external and internal, tacit and very personal.
Thanks David, I agree that "knowledge" is another Big Juicy Word that defies simple definition. With understanding, well I agree with Michael Pershan's view expressed above, that the conceptual should accompany the procedural, and I think that's true for the subjects you list, too.
"it’s why procedural and conceptual knowledge have to happen in tandem. You can’t first learn all the procedures and then learn the concepts later.” Like I said, understanding is messy. Many "greats" would disagree and so many others who "lived" their understanding, not knowing a wit about the conceptual knowledge of their subject. Read Polyani's "Personal Knowledge" it should top of any educator's bookshelf. He says - "We can know more than we can tell" . Even someone so embedded into the hallways of conservative education Ken Robinson rued that education was too conceptual, about "knowing about" and not "doing how" and all just an exercise "from the neck up". Think about creative writing workshops - do they work? I think they are just an exercise of going through the motions - you learn to write creatively by writing, not all the knowledge thereof ... and to end my screed (apologies - running to a debate class) - Earl the Pearl Washington was asked how he makes such fantastic plays. Do you practice them? Do you know what you are going to do (conception)? He replied, Hell No, I just do. If I don't know, they don't know and then they can't do nothing about it."
It's notable to me that most of the examples of tacit knowledge primarily involve physical activities (riding a bike, solving a jigsaw puzzle, shooting a basketball) rather than mental activity. And I don't know which "greats" you're alluding to but my money is on Michael Pershan being able to out-teach them with kids any day of the week.