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From: tarquin@athena.mit.edu (Robert P Poole)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: What AI is exactly.
Message-ID: <1990Sep20.021103.6155@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 20 Sep 90 02:11:03 GMT
References: <5907@plains.NoDak.edu> <59525@bbn.BBN.COM> <26F62D1A.94F@marob.masa.com>
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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>I'll never understand how verbal people can believe that >all< thinking
>is verbal.  Reminds me of Quine's claim that when a mouse fears a cat,
>he fears that a certain sentence is true!

I was wondering when somebody was going to bring this up.  I agree, nonverbal
thought is at least as important as verbal thought.  In fact, Einstein wrote
that most of his thinking in formulating General Relativity was entirely
nonverbal -- he played with three and four dimensional contours in his head.
(Yes, folks, he had an incredible geometric intuition which most of us can't
match, but I think this was not a special case.)

--
Robert P. Poole                       tarquin@athena.mit.edu
46 Massachusetts Avenue               MIT Course VIII
311B Bexley Hall                      "I love the smell of napalm early in the
Cambridge, MA  02139                   morning.  Smells like... victory!"