Understand.

A person is, for us, a someone and not just a something. Persons are able to reply to the question “why?” asked of their state, their beliefs, their intentions, their plans, and their desires. This means that, while we often endeavour to explain people in the way we explain other objects in our environment – in terms of cause and effect, laws of motion, and physical makeup – we also have another kind of access to their past and future conduct. In addition to explaining their behaviour, we seek to understand it; and the contrast between explaining and understanding is pertinent to our whole way of describing persons and their world.

Sir Roger Scruton, from The Soul of the World