Back to the function of words! We could imagine a use of language in which the words were used to bring pictures || images before our minds, an image for each word, or some thought concerning the object mentioned. As when we read a list of names of people whom we know & reading imagine them or think various thoughts about them. And to amplify the || my idea I can assume that the person who reads the list actually sketches the people or writes down sentences about them. This is obviously not the way the words in a sentence normally work. For again we might imagine a particular use of sentences in which their purpose is to make the reader draw a certain picture. One is inclined to think that understanding a sentence must consist in something at least similar to having a picture of the ‘fact the sentence refers to’ before one's mind. What is true in this is that there is a connection between the capability to produce such a picture & understanding. But the idea that understanding means producing such a picture of something similar is quite wrong. When we philosophise we are constantly bound to give an account of the || our technique of the usage of words and this technique we know in the sense that we can master it & we don't know it in the sense that we have the very greatest difficulty in surveying it & describing it. Thus we are inclined to look for an activity when we are to give an account of the meaning of a verb. & if some || an activity is closely connected with it we tend to think that the verb stands for this activity. The use of the word understanding however is such that it would be || is very misleading to say it refers to an activity. Lots of activities are signs that we have understood. The technique of use of the verb ‘understanding’ is very || most similar to the technique of use of the verb ‘to be able to’. In particular in such cases as ‘to be able to play chess’. Aren't you trying to make the distinction between understanding as a disposition & understanding as an action? No.