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Question Is there anything to the idea that someone only really understands a concept if she can explain it to someone else? Sometimes I think that the things we know most certainly (such as that 1+1=2) are actually the most difficult to explain.

Accepted:
March 2, 2009

Comments

Most concepts get their meaning, at least in part, from their relations to other concepts. The concept of a contract, for example, gets its meaning from its relations to other concepts such as the concept of a promise, the concept of an obligation, the concept of a free agent, and so on. Likewise, the concept of the number two, and the concept of addition, get their meanings from their relations to the concepts of other numbers and other mathematical functions. So understanding what a concept means seems to depend on understanding how it relates to certain other concepts.

We can be a competent user of a concept, using it appropriately in relation to other concepts, without being able to explain our usage to someone else -- at least not easily, and without extensive prompting. You might be able to enter into contracts, and to do mathematics, for example, without being able to explain what you are doing. In these cases, you have knowledge that you have difficulty explaining. Whether you really understand what you know is not so clear, however; it seems more like knowing how to ride a bicycle without understanding what you are doing. Understanding as opposed to knowledge, then, does seems to require an explicit awareness of the the relevant relations between concepts -- an awareness that also makes it possible to explain one's concepts to others.

Question Is there anything to the idea that someone only really understands a concept if she can explain it to someone else? Sometimes I think that the things we know most certainly (such as that 1+1=2) are actually the most difficult to explain. Accepted:March 2, 2009

Question Is there anything to the idea that someone only really understands a concept if she can explain it to someone else? Sometimes I think that the things we know most certainly (such as that 1+1=2) are actually the most difficult to explain.

Accepted:
March 2, 2009