Do you understand? Part I. Nominal Trap and Substitution Bias
I am an experimental psychologist seeking to understand the mind by looking at the brain. What do I mean by that? What does it mean to understand something? How does one define explanation and understanding? Please beware that I generally dislike arguments about definitions and I have no aim to subject you to a pseudo-philosophical discussion about epistemology. Having said that, I do think that these questions are worth pondering from time to time. After all, anyone can claim that they understand something, and there ought to be a way how to judge to what extent the claim is true or not. Did the high priest in ancient Greece have an understanding of the sea when he claimed that it obeyed the will of Poseidon? Did the lover understand infatuation when she swore that she was stricken by Cupid's arrow or that there was chemistry and sparks between her and her inamorato? How about the old Czech weatherman who explained that it would rain because his weather-forecasting ...