LEARNING AND HUMAN UNDERSTANDING

K E E P    L E A R N I N G

Learning can be described as a complex practice. It stretches back to the distant past. Thousands of years ago, the primary responsibility of the human brain was to find food, avoid predators, find a safe place to sleep, and find a mate. 

Today, in addition to those basic human activities, our brain is overwhelmed by other things and tasks that need to be learned. Unfortunately, the evolution of a biological structure such as the brain does not allow our society to change at the rapid pace at which it is currently changing. One has to think about how complex human life has become in roughly three generations in the last 80 years. 

Better learning does not always require more effort or more time, rather one need only effectively align how the brain naturally learns with the demands of the college classroom.

"Learn continually - there's always 'one more thing' to learn!"

-Steve Jobs-

Learning is defined in many different ways and meanings. It is described as a quantitative increase in knowledge, memorization of facts, skills and methods that can be retained as required. We begin to learn at birth. Then there are the processes of human learning and lifelong learning to replace the term lifelong education. In addition to those basic human activities, our brains are overwhelmed by other things and tasks that need to be learned. Learning is an essential part of being human.

Many works on human understanding have been produced. An Essay on Human Understanding is a 1689 work by John Locke on the basis of human knowledge and understanding. He describes the mind at birth as an empty slice.

- John Locke -

(English philosopher)

It is said that a person who has a more modern understanding, a more predictable correct understanding and an understanding that allows him to explain to others who judge others better, can understand something better. On the other hand, a person with a more limited understanding of something is said to have a "shallow" understanding. However, the depth of understanding that anyone needs to participate effectively in a job or activity can vary greatly.

L E A R N I N G

Learning is not only what we gain from schooling. It is better to say that from the birth to the death we are learning. And it is a complicated practice. Learning allows us to expand our knowledge. There is no single approach or instrument for learning. That is, you can apply it to anything in society, not only education. It is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, attitudes, and preferences.

“A persisting change in human performance or performance potential…[which] must come about as a result of the learner’s experience and interaction with the world.” From Psychology of Learning for Instruction by M. Driscoll. 

"Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

- Henry Ford -

K n o w l e d g e

Knowledge is a familiarity, awareness, or understanding of someone or something, such as facts, skills, or objects. By most accounts, knowledge can be acquired in many different ways and from many sources, including but not limited to perception, reason, memory, testimony, scientific inquiry, education, and practice. The philosophical study of knowledge is called epistemology.

Knowledge can be categorized into four types. They are, factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge and metacognitive knowledge. It’s important to know the distinctions and to understand our own knowledge strengths and areas of need to better meet our personal and/or organization’s goals.

1. Factual Knowledge - It means terminologies, specific details, and basic elements within any domain.
2. Conceptual Knowledge - It means knowing the interrelationships and functions among the details and elements that make up a larger structure.
3. Procedural Knowledge - It can be understood as knowledge of subject specific skills and algorithms, subject specific techniques and methods, and criteria for deciding when to use the right procedures.
4. Meta-cognitive Knowledge - This means the least paid-attention to knowledge type because sometimes it feels uncomfortable to reflect on what is happening inside your world. It can be understood as strategic knowledge, knowledge about cognitive tasks, and self-knowledge.

S e l f - K n o w l e d g e

“Self-knowledge” usually refers to a person's knowledge of their own sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and other mental states. A number of questions regarding self-knowledge have been the subject of extensive debates in philosophy, including whether self-knowledge differs from other types of knowledge, whether we have privileged self-knowledge compared to knowledge of other minds, and the nature of our acquaintance with ourselves. David Hume famously expressed skepticism about whether we could ever have self-knowledge over and above our immediate awareness of a "bundle of perceptions", which was part of his broader skepticism about personal identity.

"Self-knowledge is the great power by which we comprehend and control our lives"

- Vernon Howard -

E p i s t e m o l o g y

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy. It concerned with knowledge. It contain its methods, validity, scope, and the distinction between justified belief and opinion.

There are three major branches of epistemology. They are,

1. Dogmatism - We can have knowledge.
2. Skepticism - We can't have knowledge.
3. Relativism - It's all knowledge.

U N D E R S T A N D I N G

Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, a situation, or a message, through which concepts can be used to model that object. Understanding is the relationship between an object of knowing and understanding. Understanding is the ability and attitudes related to an object of knowledge that are sufficient to support intelligent behavior.

Understanding is often, though not always, related to learning concepts, and sometimes also the theory or theories associated with those concepts. A person may have a good ability to predict the behavior of an object, animal, or system. Thus, understanding is correlated with the ability to make inferences.

"Here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything."

- Charles Kettering -

H u m a n   B r a i n

The human brain is the central organ of the human nervous system, and with the spinal cord makes up the central nervous system. It controls most of the activities of the body, processing, integrating, and coordinating the information it receives from the sense organs, and making decisions as to the instructions sent to the rest of the body.

In culture, the philosophy of mind has for centuries attempted to address the question of the nature of consciousness and the mind-body problem.

Written by Dr. John J. Ratey, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the book explores the connection between exercise and the brain, providing strong evidence that aerobic exercise physically remodels the brain for peak performance on all fronts. Specifically, Dr. Ratey writes that exercise improves learning on three levels: "First, it optimizes your mind-set to improve alertness, attention, and motivation; second, it prepares and encourages nerve cells to bind to one another, which is the cellular basis for logging in new information; and third, it spurs the development of new nerve cells from stem cells in the hippocampus." In short, not only does exercise help the brain get ready to learn but it actually makes retaining information easier.

P A S S I O N 

The standard definition for emotion is a "Natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others". Emotion, William James describes emotions as "corporeal reverberations such as surprise, curiosity, rapture, fear, anger, lust, greed and the like." Passion is a feeling of intense enthusiasm towards or compelling desire for someone or something.

The philosopher Robert Solomon developed his own theory and definition of emotion. His view is that emotion is not a bodily state, but instead a type of judge. 

With regard to the relationship between emotion and our rational will, Solomon believes that people are responsible for their emotions. 

"A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success."

- Mahatma Gandhi -

P E R C E P T I O N 

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it's also shaped by the recipient's learning, memory, expectation, and attention.

Perception is important because without perception the brain cannot function properly, the mind cannot properly imagine things, thus reality cannot exist. To form, reality needs perception, the brain, and the mind to work together. Normally, we perceive our environment through five visible senses: hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch, but we also interact with the environment with five invisible senses: proprioception, equilibrioception, thermoception, nociception, and interception.

Our visible senses do not always interpret reality flawlessly. Sometimes what we perceive is not reality. 

Learning has been defined as a quantitative increase in knowledge, memorizing of facts, skills, and methods, abstracting meaning, relating parts of the subject matter to each other and to the real world. It is also defined as adjustment, or adaptation to a situation or improvement. The changes induced by learning often last a lifetime. Many experiences in life provide us with learning opportunities from which we can choose whether or not to learn. 

We need knowledge for all things in life. Knowledge must be greedy. We also need logic. We need to explore new things, learn them, be rational, understand them correctly and bring only the right things into our lives.

I hope you were able to learn a lot of new information about learning, knowledge and understanding based on the above. Add these things to your life.

- T h a n k  Y o u -

H.N.D. Ashan Sajitha

ashann188@gmail.com