How do we understand a new sentence?

Is the mind the same as the body? What is consciousness? Can machines have it?

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bahman
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How do we understand a new sentence?

Post by bahman »

By making the relations between known things.
Impenitent
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Re: How do we understand a new sentence?

Post by Impenitent »

depends on the previous convictions

-Imp
Dimebag
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Re: How do we understand a new sentence?

Post by Dimebag »

I would distinguish between implicit and explicit understanding. Implicit understanding underlies one’s ability to hear and respond in a meaningful manner. Explicit understanding would be the ability to explain the statement which was heard in one’s own words.

Implicit understanding is required for responding. Before we can explicitly understand, we must be able to respond. Therefore, implicit understanding forms along with use of language. As usage and response of language occurs, explicit understanding can coalesce or form, through a form of meta understanding of language, or language’s self understanding.

So when we are first starting to use language, our understanding is implicit, and forms via usage, a kind of trial and error, observing cause and effect of usage of words, as well as noticing associations between words and their referents in our sensory experience.

Things are the first parts of language that form and are understood, then once mobility and autonomy is happening, verbs, or doing words can be learned alongside the nouns.

When first learning language, we don’t necessarily first understand things in sentences, but rather the words. Sentences will spontaneously emerge once the words are grasped.

Understanding starts simple and becomes more complex once more words and grammatical usage is learned, allowing more complexity, context and nuance to be encoded and decoded in language.

So there might be some sentences where only one or two words are understood, yet, the meaning of a sentence will be completely unknown unless a certain proportion of the words, context and meaning is grasped.

Once one has an explicit understanding of language, they would most likely be able to understand almost any sentence implicitly. But, it would depend also on the area of knowledge, for instance, if you had no knowledge of particle physics, and encountered a sentence describing certain knowledge within that realm, although you might understand each word individually, the meaning would not be there because the usage of the words is specific to discussions of particle physics.
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bahman
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Re: How do we understand a new sentence?

Post by bahman »

Dimebag wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2021 2:39 am I would distinguish between implicit and explicit understanding. Implicit understanding underlies one’s ability to hear and respond in a meaningful manner. Explicit understanding would be the ability to explain the statement which was heard in one’s own words.

Implicit understanding is required for responding. Before we can explicitly understand, we must be able to respond. Therefore, implicit understanding forms along with use of language. As usage and response of language occurs, explicit understanding can coalesce or form, through a form of meta understanding of language, or language’s self understanding.

So when we are first starting to use language, our understanding is implicit, and forms via usage, a kind of trial and error, observing cause and effect of usage of words, as well as noticing associations between words and their referents in our sensory experience.

Things are the first parts of language that form and are understood, then once mobility and autonomy is happening, verbs, or doing words can be learned alongside the nouns.

When first learning language, we don’t necessarily first understand things in sentences, but rather the words. Sentences will spontaneously emerge once the words are grasped.

Understanding starts simple and becomes more complex once more words and grammatical usage is learned, allowing more complexity, context and nuance to be encoded and decoded in language.

So there might be some sentences where only one or two words are understood, yet, the meaning of a sentence will be completely unknown unless a certain proportion of the words, context and meaning is grasped.

Once one has an explicit understanding of language, they would most likely be able to understand almost any sentence implicitly. But, it would depend also on the area of knowledge, for instance, if you had no knowledge of particle physics, and encountered a sentence describing certain knowledge within that realm, although you might understand each word individually, the meaning would not be there because the usage of the words is specific to discussions of particle physics.
Thanks for the elaboration.
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