Until a few years ago, I always understood cavities as someTHING you can get on your teeth rather then an actual cavity/hole forming on your teeth. So how do I go from knowing a cavity as a word or object to understanding it as what it is, a cavity in my teeth. Is this simply caused by my stupid brain making a new physical connection between neurons or something else perhaps?
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This is kind of a deep question about epistemics. As far as I’ve been able to figure, we don’t really ever completely understand anything, all we do is remove our ignorance to a degree.
You can observe how something works and, once you’re able to predict how it will behave based on the relevant circumstances, you would say you “understand” that thing. But do you *really* understand it all the way down to its most base level just because you can predict its behavior? Sure you know that if a, b, c are true then it will do x, y, z … but *why* do those circumstances give rise to that result?
Well then you dive down a level deeper and figure all that out and now you can predict how specific components of the thing will behave that make the outcome like it is. But it’s just the same thing repeated at a finer scale, and you can progressively figure out at deeper and deeper levels *what* will happen based on the circumstances, but *why* remains elusive. So, in a sense, you’re just removing your ignorance down to finer and finer scales of resolution.
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