Regarding the three terms of the course title, it occurs to me to wonder what ought to be their natural order. We would seem to need understanding before we could teach, but then again learning probably precedes understanding, if we take as paradigmatic the natural, playful, pre-linguistic learning of small children, their visceral absorption of the world. Likewise, the propensity of children for curiosity and active exploration long precedes teaching, both temporally, and as a fact about human nature that probably alone renders any sort of teaching a conceivable undertaking.
If this is right, then ‘Learning, Understanding, Teaching’ would be the right order of priority, as well as an order of importance. Early in the course we asked whether and how a teacher (or the architecture of a teaching context) might suborn curiosity. We still don’t know the answer in any detail, but we may have a sense of why the question remains important.
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Nice. I just wonder about the actual relations between understanding and learning. Certainly, understanding, say, assertion X requires prior learning (the language in which I assert X, the referents of the linguistic symbols, the meaning of the terms, etc.); but so, too, does learning X rest on prior understanding of those same things.
Exactly. Since we're taking pre-linguistic learning as propaedeutic to understanding propositions. Also, as fallible realists we're assuming that language bears some, albeit potentially indirect, relation to experiential learning (which is about things, not words). Thus understanding can fairly encompass linguistic and pre-linguistic learning, and there's no regress problem.
Then there's a question whether even pre-linguistic learning deserves the name if it lacks learner-devised structure and symbolism. But we could fairly concede that this element of (non-radical) construction is necessary without untoward consequences.
I still don't see the order of priority here. For example, why not call the original cognition prelinguistic understanding?
Perhaps we could, with some slight strain of the language. I'm inclined to reserve 'understanding' for the sort of higher-level cognitive processing involved in the grasp of relations of systems, where learning could encompass rote acquisition or pre-conscious familiarity with things. Imagine, for example, someone who can hit a tennis backhand without any discoursive grasp of the physical, neuromuscular, perceptual, or even game-theoretic matters at issue. He has learned this skill, but doesn't understand it.
One reason for answering in this way is to equip us to address such concerns as Searle's. The occupant of the Chinese room has learned how to output appropriate characters in response to inputs, but does not understand Chinese. Such learning is necessary, but not sufficient, for understanding; hence my lexical ordering.
In light of this thinking, I would retain my order of priority, but revise the order of importance of these things. Teaching follows the learning-understanding binary, but insofar as it furthers the processing of prior learning into understanding, it gains significance as a bridge (to the world?).
Thinking about the example from tennis, it's clear that the distinction between practical and propositional knowledge is making this harder to iron out. Knowing how to hit the ball involves both learning/acquiring/knowing how to perform the skill and understanding/knowing that, among other things, (here comes the proposition!) I can do it. Understanding is in this instance seems synonymous with knowing, and learning is equally involved in coming to know and coming to understand. But still, I can only learn if I first understand or know something. Maybe learning simply denotes a process and knowing/understanding are different descriptions of the result. And I suppose we can stipulate that understanding is in some sense deeper than knowing or learning; and I recognize that to be a popular connotation..
We are not too far apart here, though whether the proposition "I can do it!" is necessarily entailed by the ability to hit a backhand seems an open question to me.
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