We might be predicting behavior or give causal explanations. Explaining neurological states that arises the behavior of another might not leave a person at least feeling that she’s being understood, even when we “comprehend” and correctly explain why in that way.
There might be something lacking by merely adopting a detached third personal explanation of what we do when we understand others.
You might know another’s beliefs and desires and so predict behavior, but still be dumbfounded by not understanding what for when you don’t take the behavior to be choseworthy yourself. For example, you know that Mike prefers swimming over the lake instead of using the bridge across it when he goes to his workplace.
The question is if the lacking part is taking their reasons as good reasons. Do we understand another person, if we think of his reasons as choiceworthy? Is it true that we don’t understand if we don’t take the others reasons as choiceworthy?
Here we might assume that the person choosing to swim thinks that it’s choiceworthy to swim himself. But it’s not always the case that we think of our own actions as choiceworthy. Imagine for example people who smoke but/and who themselves doesn’t see the behavior as choiceworthy. So this explanation seems to miss the point.
Furthermore, if we understand another person only if we can agree with another person then it excludes any understanding in those cases where we disagree.
But maybe we can understand people even if we disagree with them. For example, you could know that a person fully believed that his life was in danger, and from his perspective acted out of self-defence, so understand why he did that (by finding as a choiceworthy action from his perspective) but also disagree about that he was in danger, or disagree with him about that it was the right thing to do.
So, what do we do when we understand another person, does it (not) necessarily involve sharing normative judgement?
Can we understand persons on political extremes, or perhaps sort of genocidal people, without adopting their stance?
Can there be cases of that we can’t understand it, because it’s non understandable and some, like those people, are sort of normatively “dead wrong end of story.”
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I’ve thought about this very thing recently and am interested in discussing it, but I’m at work and can’t right now so I’m commenting and saving for later.
Understanding starts with definitions, and it depends on what your definition of understanding is.
There are verbal and non verbal methods of communication.
And, idk about you, but this is true for me: i can understand someone’s decisions AND still disagree with them. (Toddlers are classic core example.)
But if by understandable you mean, absolutely and completely understand why someone does something, then I would say no.
Everything we do stems from our brain. The brain is composed of the past, and its predictive abilities. Past future projects future hurts. We can’t possibly know what anyone else’s brain does or knows or values… and as such, we can only possibly understand our reality from our perspective and not from anyone else’s… no matter the history or culture we share- none of us (not even identical twins) experience the same life.
We are all vastly different, while being composed of the same things. Kind of strange, but language (verbal and non verbal) allows us to either agree or disagree. Our core values are the operating principles we live by, and that’s determined by our parents and our culture… there are primal things too- like survival… it’s what drives a lot of the brains predictive pressure…
So yeah that’s my answer.
Any and all understanding is subjective and whether or not we understand is ultimately our choice.
Understanding a person is constructed on our histories and social-emotional development. Developmentally, most adult people can grasp another person they care about as a subject in their own right. This is good development. Some people cannot develop, due to trauma and possibly genetics. So other persons remain an object or a thing.
Because we all regress under stress, someone we value as real can suddenly be perceived as an object or even a thing. Too often even well developed people can regard unfamiliar people as objects. As someone once said stereotypes save time. This is kindling for so much violence against the stranger we humans have committed.