The Paradox of the Missing Biological Function in Understanding: Implications for Moral and General Education

Abstract

This essay argues that the endemic moral crisis and the crisis of confidence in education are related; and both are a function, in part, of a paradoxical divide between two types of human understanding: psychological and biofunctional. In the psychological realm, people cause understanding using the psychological theories they know. Biofunctionally, understanding is caught by the understander, by analogy to catching a cold, caused by an unknown biological function, without the understander (a) having direct access to the cause, (b) knowing what the cause is, and (c) realizing how the cause works. This paradox introduces a divide between people’s psychological and biofunctional types of understanding. Unwarily, people tend to overlook this divide thereby compromising their full understanding potential. In this essay, I elaborate on the nature of this paradox, the awesome divide that it causes, and its implications for moral and general education.