Wednesday, August 2, 2023

LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING DATA - A THEORETICAL IDEA

Suppose someone tells you or you read somewhere - Person X gave a ball to person Y. Now, the definition of a ball is - a spherical object used in playing games. But when I am listening to or reading the sentence at the very very first sight, what is my mind’s idea of a ball? I take just a tiny aspect of the definition of a ball. I don't process it as “a spherical object used in playing games” at that time. I am not “in touch with” the actual definition of a ball while merely reading the sentence. I just faintly, quickly, hazily visualize a typical ball, which is my “understanding of the read word ‘ball’ and move ahead. I similarly do the same visualization for “some person X” (just say a blurred image of a vertical human being), “some person Y” (just say a faint image of a vertical human being), and “giving” (which is a 1 second video clip of hand(s) jerking ahead). This is LEVEL 1 - understanding the sentence at a mere Syntactic English level or making sense of just the English of the sentence. LEVEL 2 - If I then reflect, think, pay closer attention to or begin to ponder over the data, I will draw leads and inferences and clues from it. One thing you might say is - “were they playing a game or something?” LEVEL 2 immediately follows LEVEL 1 in time. In fact they are over ‘chunks of words’ of a sentence at a time, if the sentence is not short like the example above. Meanings of words are like Graphical User Interface operating system files presented in the mind as icons with a symbol and a name. The name of the file is the very word. The icons (symbols on top of the words) are the representative faint, hazy visualizations of the “meaning” of the word. The mind accesses just these symbols during the first-sight reading of or decoding the mere English (syntax) of the sentence. Thinking or reflecting( LEVEL 2 - understanding the Semantics) is when you “double-click” on the icons of the files and “open” those files which have their definitions/properties stored inside them. In LEVEL 2 mode, (after the basic syntax is congnized), you access the contents of the files, and also inter-connect the contents of the different files to draw inferences/leads/clues from the sentence. So when you open the file ‘ball’, one thing you immediately see (say, written at the very “beginning” of the file) is “..playing games..”, which makes you pass the remark - “were X and Y playing or going to play some game?” (Basically, was this related in any way to playing some game?).

Labels: ,

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]

<< Home