coberst: "If so do you not find that the concepts [understanding and knowing] are different in kind?"
Try this for size:
To understand is to identify new information as being consistent with our existing information (the process of assimilation), or to derive such new information by deduction (the deduction of conclusions from premises). I would call the information itself "knowledge".
Having said that, semantics being what it is, "knowledge" has a broader meaning when used in the context of "to have a knowledge of" where it encompasses not only information, but also understanding.
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TFF: "Neither knowledge nor understanding nor even observation is Truth - and yet, in some sense, all of them (even when they are false) are a kind of truth (small t)."
Yes, I go along with that. Our understanding is limited by the availability of information, and by the limited assimilative and deductive capacities of the human mind.
Carl Sagan has been quoted as having said "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy". I have had learning experiences that resemble this ecastasy that Sagan speaks of. It seems to me that understanding happens rarely and is a confluence of emotion and intellection.
