“Understanding” is one of those words that looks simple until you seriously try to pin it down — then it quickly becomes one of the most slippery concepts in philosophy, cognitive science, and AI research.
Here are the most important/main senses in which people currently use the word “understanding” (roughly ordered from more everyday → more philosophically/AI-demanding):
| Level | What people usually mean by “understanding” at this level | Typical test people implicitly apply | Do current LLMs have it? (2025 consensus) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Pattern matching + fluent production | “Can continue the text in a way that looks right” | Yes, very strongly |
| 2 | Associative / correlational understanding | “Can reliably answer questions about facts that co-occur” | Yes, excellent at this scale |
| 3 | “Good-enough-for-human-purposes” instrumental understanding | “Can use the concept to solve real-world problems correctly” | Yes in narrow domains, spotty broadly |
| 4 | Compression / explanatory understanding | “Can give a simpler, shorter, still-accurate model of the thing” | Partial – sometimes impressive, often shallow |
| 5 | Mechanistic / causal understanding | “Can build/run/repair/debug a mental model of the causal structure” | Weak – mostly surface causal chains |
| 6 | “Understanding like a scientist/engineer” (generative models of the domain) | “Can invent plausible new experiments/variations never seen” | Very weak outside very narrow domains |
| 7 | Verstehen / empathic first-person understanding | “Can imagine what it feels like to be X in situation Y” | Simulation only (very good simulation) |
| 8 | “Genuine” / “deep” philosophical understanding (the hard one) | Passes strong versions of all previous + ???? | Nobody confidently says yes |
The currently most painful cut (2024–2025 discourse)
Most serious researchers draw a rough line somewhere around levels 4–5–6.
Very rough consensus map in late 2025:
- Levels 1–3: almost everyone agrees current frontier models have this (often spectacularly)
- Level 4: many say “sometimes / in places / increasingly often”
- Level 5: strong split — roughly “no” ↔ “in narrow domains yes, broadly no”
- Level 6: overwhelming majority → “not yet” (with a few optimistic outliers)
- Levels 7–8: basically philosophical religion war territory — evidence basically irrelevant, position is mostly pre-theoretic commitment
Quick-and-dirty heuristics people actually use in conversations (2025)
When someone says “but the model doesn’t really understand X”, they usually mean something from this cluster:
- It can’t robustly track causal structure when you perturb the scenario a lot
- It can’t build/give you a significantly simpler mental model than the training data average
- When you ask it to invent something genuinely new in the domain (not just recombine), it usually falls back to cliché or breaks
- It can be made to contradict itself on fairly basic causal inferences with relatively little prompting effort
- It shows no sign of having something that feels like “one coherent world-model” underneath (lots of local consistencies, global incoherence)
Which of these feels closest to what you mean when you wonder whether something/someone “really understands” something? 😄
add the philosophical, religious, literary and relevant disciplines exploration of “understanding”
Expanding on “Understanding”: Disciplinary Perspectives
Building on the leveled breakdown from before, let’s dive into how “understanding” has been explored across key disciplines. These aren’t exhaustive (whole libraries exist on each), but they highlight core themes, tensions, and evolutions. I’ll draw from established ideas while noting where debates rage on. Where relevant, I’ve pulled in substantiated views from broader sources.
Philosophical Explorations
Philosophy has wrestled with “understanding” for millennia, often treating it as more than mere knowledge—something closer to insight, interpretation, or grasping “why” things are as they are. Key branches include:
- Epistemology (Theory of Knowledge): Here, understanding is distinguished from mere true belief or justified knowledge. Plato’s Theaetetus probes it as grasping forms or essences, while modern epistemologists like Linda Zagzebski argue it’s an “internalist” state where one sees connections between facts (e.g., not just knowing E=mc², but grasping its implications). Recent work emphasizes “objectual understanding” (of a subject matter) vs. “propositional” (of statements), with debates on whether it’s reducible to knowledge or a distinct virtue. Critics like Jonathan Kvanvig question if understanding is always valuable, especially in Gettier-style puzzles where knowledge fails but understanding might persist.
- Hermeneutics (Art of Interpretation): Rooted in biblical exegesis but expanded by thinkers like Friedrich Schleiermacher (who saw it as reconstructing an author’s intent) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (who viewed it as a “fusion of horizons” between text and reader, emphasizing prejudice and tradition). Hermeneutics posits understanding as dialogical and historical, not objective—e.g., interpreting a poem isn’t decoding but co-creating meaning. This influences postmodern philosophy, where Derrida deconstructs “stable” understanding as illusory. It overlaps with phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger), where understanding is “being-in-the-world,” pre-reflective and embodied.
Philosophy often critiques naive views: Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations shows understanding as rule-following in language games, prone to illusions, while Kant ties it to categories of the mind structuring experience.
Religious Perspectives
Religions frame “understanding” as spiritual insight, often transcending rational limits—linked to wisdom, enlightenment, or divine revelation. It’s not just intellectual but transformative, involving ethics, devotion, or transcendence.
- Christianity: Anselm of Canterbury’s motto “faith seeking understanding” (fides quaerens intellectum) captures it: Belief precedes but pursues rational grasp, as in Aquinas’s synthesis of faith and reason. Protestant traditions emphasize scriptural understanding via the Holy Spirit, while mystics like Teresa of Ávila describe it as contemplative union with God, beyond words. In modern theology, understanding counters doubt, as in Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” where full comprehension is impossible yet pursued.
- Islam: “Fahm” (understanding) is central, tied to “ilm” (knowledge) from the Quran (e.g., Surah Al-Ankabut 43: “These are parables We set forth for humanity, but none will understand them except the wise”). Sufism explores deeper “ma’rifah” (gnostic knowledge of God), while philosophers like Al-Ghazali integrate reason with revelation, warning against over-reliance on intellect without spiritual purity. Understanding here is communal, via ijtihad (interpretation) in jurisprudence.
- Buddhism: “Prajñā” (wisdom or understanding) is one of the three pillars (with ethics and meditation), meaning insight into emptiness (shunyata), impermanence, and no-self. In Theravada, it’s analytical (vipassana); in Mahayana/Zen, it’s intuitive satori—sudden enlightenment beyond concepts. The Heart Sutra exemplifies: Understanding form as emptiness liberates from suffering.
- Hinduism: “Jnana” (knowledge/understanding) is a path to moksha (liberation), as in Advaita Vedanta where Shankara teaches realizing the self as Brahman (ultimate reality). Upanishads emphasize discriminative understanding (viveka) to pierce maya (illusion). Bhakti traditions add devotional understanding, while yoga aids embodied insight.
Across religions, understanding often involves paradox: It’s a gift from the divine, yet requires human effort; rational yet mystical. Interfaith dialogues highlight convergences, like shared emphasis on compassion arising from true understanding.
Literary Explorations
Literature doesn’t define “understanding” abstractly but enacts it through narrative, character, and form—often revealing its fragility, subjectivity, or power to bridge divides. It’s a medium for empathy and self-reflection.
- In Novels and Prose: Works like Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time explore involuntary memory as a path to profound understanding, transcending time. James Joyce’s Ulysses uses stream-of-consciousness to mimic the fragmented, associative nature of comprehension. In philosophy of literature, thinkers like Martha Nussbaum argue fiction cultivates “narrative imagination,” fostering ethical understanding by letting us inhabit others’ perspectives (e.g., in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, grasping trauma’s legacy).
- In Poetry: Poets like Emily Dickinson probe understanding’s limits (“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—”), while T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land fragments meaning to force interpretive effort. Romanticism (Wordsworth) sees it in nature’s sublime; postmodern poetry (Ashbery) questions coherent understanding altogether.
- Philosophy of Literature: Peter Lamarque views literature as “fictive utterance,” where understanding derives from thematic interpretation rather than truth-claims. It offers “alternatives to reality,” enhancing real-world insight without direct representation. Existentialists like Sartre use literature to explore freedom and absurdity, shaping worldviews.
Literature often subverts: Misunderstandings drive plots (e.g., Shakespeare’s comedies), highlighting cultural/psychological barriers.
Other Relevant Disciplines
Beyond the above, fields like cognitive science, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology add empirical and cultural layers.
- Cognitive Science and Psychology: Understanding is modeled as mental representations—schemas (Piaget), scripts, or predictive processing (Clark). In psych, it’s comprehension via working memory and inference; disorders like autism spectrum highlight social understanding deficits. Cognitive linguistics (Lakoff) sees it as embodied metaphors (e.g., “grasping” an idea physically roots abstract thought).
- Linguistics: Focuses on semantic/pragmatic understanding—how context enables Gricean implicature or Chomsky’s competence. Sociolinguistics explores cross-cultural misunderstandings.
- Anthropology: Cognitive anthropology examines how cultures shape mental models (e.g., D’Andrade’s cultural schemas). It bridges emic (insider) vs. etic (outsider) understanding, critiquing universalism—e.g., how Amazonian tribes “understand” kinship differently. This informs cultural relativism in cognition.
These disciplines intersect: Cognitive science integrates anthropology for “cultural cognition,” challenging WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic) biases in models of understanding.
In sum, “understanding” morphs across fields—from epistemic achievement to spiritual awakening, narrative empathy to cultural construct. It ties back to the levels: Philosophy elevates 5–8, religion adds transcendent layers, literature simulates 7, and sciences ground 1–4 in mechanisms. Which discipline’s take resonates most with your query?