Originally posted by Victor Kaum
Is understanding not already a meta-notion from our culture? How are we able to 'understand' something if this understanding is a projection of our own categories on the other culture?
That's an interesting thought... But isn't everything a projection of our own 'categories'?
We see and sense the world the way we do because of how our brain is arranged, because of the processes and mechanisms going on in there... Those 'structures' are similar for all human beings, but the way we 'fill' those pre-arranged structures is different for each of us.
It's based on our cultural, geographical, personal ... situation/experiences, which determine our neural networks. We all have the same hardware, but the software is different for all of us, if you will...

That's why I think your statement is correct, and you can even broaden your statement to everything we try to 'understand'.

An example: about everything we know is based on causality (from the relativity theory over mechanics to biology). Sounds to me like our brain is limiting the things we can understand: we are limited by the pre-shaped forms of our brain...

Leaves us with the final question: will we ever understand the exact working of our own brain? My answer: no, because it takes a PentiumIV to figure out a PentiumIII...