Jacob, "Understanding" is the faculty of thinking the object of sensuous intuition; or the faculty of concepts, judgements and principles. The understanding is the source of concepts, categories and principles by means of which the manifold of sense is brought into the unity of apperception. Immanual Kant suggests that understanding has a a common root with sensibility. I think you would, perhaps enjoy reading up on Kantianism. In particular: 1. Transcendental Aesthetic 2. Transcendental Logic 3. Transcendental Dialectic, and last but not least Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
Rick, UNDERSTANDING is the capacity to explain a Percept or a Concept. After writing this, I looked up a dictionary: I prefer my definition.
It was the fact that I had to put in WRITING my thoughts! Time ago I had a dream that taught me the essentiality of writing for thinking. From such a dream it is proper to assume that it was only after writing was invented and developed, that H. sapiens really deserved that name...
As for Kant, I perused a synopsis on him, and wouldn't read any further. His valid ideas have been incorporated to common knowledge. The others are of interest to professional philosophers. Kant himself would now disavow them. He made his mark; I cannot 'despise' him as passe', but I wouldn't say, "Kant believed that..."
I can LEARN what 'white color' is, but I must UNDERSTAND that it is formed by all the colors of the visible spectrum of electromagnetic radiations.
I thought I understood the concept of 'justice,' but actually I only had learned it. It was only after you asked me to express D-SP ideas on it, that I came to understand the real meaning of this concept!
I had been no stranger to the subject, which of course had interested me. So, what made the difference now?
What a sweeping and daring assumption from just a dream! But this is the heart of D-SP: such idea made its appearance AS I FINISHED WRITING the initial part of this paragraph... That is, as I was writing about the importance of writing, I had the insight (epiphany) that H. sapiens could have developed only after writing was developed. This concept encompasses the D-SP concept of meta-thinking as the vertex of the human mind's virtues, by adding: Meta-thinking was an inevitable development associated with the development of the ability to write.