For What It's Worth

The Space Between – From Listening to Understanding

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding requires intellectual patience. Discerning truth from falsehood demands humility, the willingness to suspend snap judgments, and the discipline to examine evidence carefully.
• Perception is not the same as reality. Bias, emotion, and incomplete information can distort our view of the world; distinguishing fact from opinion requires active, logical inquiry.
• True understanding should shape behavior. Listening well, thinking clearly, and testing assumptions are not merely intellectual exercises—they lead to wiser action and more responsible engagement with others.

In Decoding Lies 5 we examined the difference between instinctive reaction and disciplined judgment; that not all quick responses are equal. While snap impulses often mislead us—especially in unfamiliar territory—trained judgment emerges from study, reflection, and intellectual humility. We explored how a liberal arts education cultivates the habit of suspending immediate belief long enough to understand ideas fully before accepting or rejecting them.

“We think we listen, but very rarely do we listen with real understanding, true empathy. Yet listening, of this very special kind, is one of the most potent forces for change that I know.”

–Carl Rogers, A Way Of Being, 1995

The Discipline of Intellectual Patience

Carl Rogers was a humanistic psychologist. According to the American Psychological Association, he is best known for developing the concept of “unconditional positive regard.” This idea describes the relationship between a therapist and a client. In this relationship, the therapist offers a positive, encouraging, and considerate atmosphere in which to conduct sessions. This mode of interaction continues to guide many therapists in the field today.

As a psychologist, Rogers gives us a glimpse into what he considered a successful approach to his discipline. It is also a useful approach for anyone interested in distinguishing fact from fiction. It involves listening with genuine understanding and authentic empathy—a quiet but potent force for change.

Let us now consider another element of logic and reasoning: how we listen and how we understand. Once again, it may help to slow this process down and look more closely at its nuances.

When we gather information, what happens in the “space” between listening and understanding? From the moment information enters our awareness, what occurs in that brief gap before it becomes understanding? How is that gap bridged? What frame of reference—our values, beliefs, and worldview—do we use to help shape that understanding?

The process of understanding is an extraordinary achievement that we often take for granted. Scholars have explored human understanding for centuries, from Pinker’s “curse of knowledge” theory to Chomsky’s work on syntax and Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics.

For our purposes here, we will focus on just two aspects of reasoning: listening and understanding.

There are many different degrees, levels, or stages of listening, and descriptions vary depending on whom we ask. A brief primer can serve as a helpful reminder of what we are referring to here.

Before we go any further, it is worth noting that some people find it very difficult to genuinely receive or accept another person’s perspective. This stance is sometimes associated with what philosophers call epistemic relativism. When listening is not connected with real meaning, it becomes harder to fully engage with others.

This is uncommon, but many of us can think of someone who seems to fit, at least in part, into this category.

Most of us are wired in a way that allows for the possibility of empathetic listening. For a few people, however, this seems extremely difficult. Something interrupts their ability to internalize the meaning of words and to link language with its consequences. While many of us experience empathy when we form a deeper connection with another person, they may struggle to systematically understand or share this experience.

Most of us have, at times, regretted not really listening. This often happens when we are preoccupied, when our mind is elsewhere. Sometimes we catch ourselves in time and adjust our behavior. Depending on the situation, we may even be gently called back to attention.

“Were you even listening to what I was saying?”

We like to think we are naturally inclined to connect emotionally with other people. Yet our minds do wander, especially when we are trying to sort out what is true and what is not.

There is no simple switch we can flip to keep ourselves fully present. Instead, we can choose to commit to a habit of careful, logical thinking, practiced over time, until it becomes almost second nature—a process we continually check and refine.

1. Determining to find truth
2. Knowing our own biases
3. Using logic and reasoning and not only opinions
4. Pause quick judgments
5. Consider all sides

Most of us do not use these tools consistently. It is easy to fall back on our immediate feelings or on opinions formed by others (like mistaking a harmless stick for a snake, as described in a previous article).

Using logic helps us break these patterns and think beyond our initial reactions or the assumptions we have inherited. We are not relying only on what we already know. We are also committed to discovering what we still need to know in order to move closer to the truth.

There are no cookie-cutter answers or one-size-fits-all solutions to complex problems. A solution that worked two months ago may not work today, even for a similar situation. Each new problem invites us to think carefully again.

Growing Comfortable With Discomfort

In a crisis, one quality that is especially valued is a calm, steady presence under pressure. Leaning on reasoning rather than feelings helps us avoid confusing fiction with fact and allows us to live with uncertainty. This is not because we possess a hidden solution. Often, it is wiser to acknowledge that we do not yet have an answer at all.

At least, not yet.

Our confidence does not come from pretending to know everything. Instead, it rests on our belief that we can meet challenges as they arise and work through them thoughtfully.

There is something reassuring about working with or being around someone who is genuinely confident. When that confidence is real, it usually grows out of knowledge and experience. We have learned to develop solutions in a logical, rational way and to respond with care under pressure. This frees us from feeling we must always have immediate answers and, instead, allows others to see us work through the problem toward a solution.

In American society, skepticism toward experts has been increasing. There is a growing mistrust of them (see “The Death of Expertise,” Tom Nichols, Oxford University Press, 2017). This is unfortunate because it can open the door to misinformation, speculation, and falsehoods.

One of the cautions in Nichols’s book offers a possible explanation for this mistrust: the actions of some experts themselves. Confident in their authority in one field, they may feel compelled to speak with the same certainty in areas where they have less knowledge, especially when making short- or long-term predictions.

This is an area where we can take an important lesson. We do well not to assume that our knowledge or experience is the final word. Fully embracing the label of “expert” can create a false sense of security and cloud our own understanding. No matter how many letters follow our names, we still do not know everything.

Trying to maintain the appearance of knowing it all can be exhausting. We end up investing energy in protecting a fragile image rather than being honest about our limits.

Most of us can think of people like this. Yet when we are willing to acknowledge that we do not know everything, we no longer feel pressured to keep up that image. We choose, instead, to pause and reflect rather than give in to the impulse to make quick, unexamined judgments.

That kind of honesty can feel uncomfortable at first.

However, if we begin from this premise and practice it over time, we gradually learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

Choosing this posture—accepting discomfort rather than resisting it—is essential. It helps us slow down, hold back snap judgments, and put ourselves in a better position to make thoughtful, well-informed decisions.

The Relationship Between Understanding and Behavior

Understanding is the act of grasping something through our mental abilities. It allows us to develop both simple and complex solutions to problems and to notice patterns in how things relate to one another.

During our formative years, we learn to understand simple math problems (for example, 2+2=4). We learn a formula to memorize. “Show your work,” we are told, to demonstrate that we recognize the relationships that exist between the numbers, not just the correct answer.

Johnny has two apples. Sarah gives Johnny the only two apples she has. How many apples does Johnny have now? How many apples does Sarah now have? It is more than a rote 2+2 equals what(?). We begin to understand the relationship between the number of apples Johnny now possesses and the number that Sarah no longer has, and how one person’s gain is connected to another’s loss.

Understanding does include formulaic ideas. However, it is also expected that we are capable of developing more complex forms of understanding that recognize how things are connected and how those connections affect people’s lives.

This raises an important question about understanding: is it enough to simply “show” understanding? Or are we also, at least sometimes, called to express it through our behavior? When a situation involves the well-being of others, recognizing patterns and causes does not automatically tell us what to do, but it does place us in a different position of responsibility. If establishing fact from fiction requires us to use complex ways of understanding, how might we also take seriously what that understanding suggests about how we live? What kinds of responses plausibly follow from what we claim to know, and what do we offer as evidence that we have taken our own insights to heart?

As long as we continue to have experiences, we continue to learn. We add to our understanding of how the world works. Our learning and experiences throughout life help us deepen and refine this understanding, including what it might reasonably ask of us.

Understanding, then, is not just the mental capacity to remember facts and figures. It’s the process we use to recognize the relationships between things. It shows how they interact and change over time. In doing so, it helps shape and support our worldview, including our sense of what seems fair, humane, or responsible.

If we treat understanding only as a personal accomplishment, we risk leaving its deeper purpose unfulfilled. It can become something we possess and display, like a credential or certificate, without asking how that knowledge might bear on how we treat ourselves and one another.

Many people understandably take pride in their education. Yet, it can be helpful to remember that education is most meaningful when it informs how we think, feel, and act—especially in situations where our choices have consequences for others. In such cases, it is natural to ask whether our behavior is in reasonable harmony with what we say we understand.

Consider, for example, how inequity functions in a society. A person may be able to explain its causes and name its effects. Yet many philosophers have noted that the capacity to describe a harmful pattern is analytically distinct from the task of considering possible responses to it. The question, then, is not simply whether we can show that we are aware of inequity’s presence, but whether our understanding of it carries implications for what it would be coherent, or intellectually honest, for us to do.

Similarly, one may recognize that a group faces stigma or disenfranchisement from the larger society. One can map the relevant mechanisms of exclusion and still remain personally untouched in practice. In that case, it is at least arguable that one’s understanding is partial: it remains primarily descriptive and external. A more encompassing understanding would include some reflection on how one’s own position and choices either participate in, accommodate, or quietly resist those dynamics, even if different agents reasonably arrive at different courses of action.

We may also have insight into beauty. Yet if we resist its invitation to disrupt or reorient our emotional or sensual routines, has the beauty been fully apprehended, or merely registered at a distance? In this sense, understanding can be seen as partly realized in the ways it is allowed to orient us, not only in the clarity of our ideas about it.

We may need to reconsider what we mean by understanding. The general response to these questions is that understanding need not be seen only as a possession or a status. It is more than something to gain simply for the sake of having it. Instead, especially where others’ well-being is involved, understanding can be viewed as a gentle but persistent invitation to revise and renegotiate our stance toward the world. This does not mean that every insight demands the same response from every person, but it does suggest that genuine understanding and thoughtful action are, at their best, closely and intelligibly related.

Listening – Understanding – Action

Understanding is both a process and a catalyst. It can actively, and sometimes unpredictably, interact with and change whatever it encounters.

The world is full of people who have made a difference. When they came to truly understand a problem, they were changed by it. They devoted themselves to working toward a solution. Most of us will never reach the heights of their accomplishments, nor match the depth of their sacrifices. Some have even given their lives. Yet their examples remain a quiet beacon of hope, inviting us to follow in our own way.

It can be tempting to treat understanding as an end in itself, a destination or achievement. However, understanding as a stand-alone accomplishment was never meant to be the final result.

Discerning fact from fiction requires genuine understanding—and the courage to let that understanding guide what we do next. It invites us to act, to do a bit more, and then a bit more again.

“If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.” –Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book 1

Discerning fact from fiction is a worthy goal, but it is not the end of the journey. Once we have a clearer sense of what is real, we are invited to speak carefully about what is true—and to name what is not, when it matters and when we are able.

We practice truth-telling when we describe something as true when it is true. We also practice truth-telling when we gently but clearly say that something is false when it is false.

Editor’s note: This essay was originally published as Decoding Lies: Using Your Bullshit Indicator, Parts 1–8, on Jan. 16, 2023 – Jan. 24, 2023. The parts have been combined and edited for clarity and continuity.