How Do Partial Understandings Work?

Abstract

Most understandings are massively incomplete, raising questions about how they could be of any use. This in turn leads to questions about the typical contents of partial understandings and whether they suggest a different account of what understandings are and how they are used not just by laypeople but even by experts. Whether they are scientists or young children, all people work with partial understandings and usually fail to realize just how partial those understandings are. It is not possible for any one mind to store all the details necessary to completely understand many phenomena. Yet those gaps may be surprisingly functional, especially given ways that young children cope with overwhelming causal content. Our partial understandings work through heuristics that enable us to use what we do know to appropriately defer and lock onto knowledge in other minds. Early exposure to mechanisms may provide a route to more abstract causal understandings, such as a system’s causal complexity, that endure when mechanistic details fade from memory. These abstract understandings may guide deference. Illusions of understanding may also result in useful restraints on storing details that are not really necessary given access to knowledge in other minds.