Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!ames!haven!purdue!bu-cs!mirror!rayssd!raybed2!linus!mbunix!bwk
From: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Thought/Emotion/Feeling
Summary: Right on!
Keywords: Intuition, Synthetic Reasoning, Analogy, Nonverbal Processing
Message-ID: <43583@linus.UUCP>
Date: 13 Jan 89 10:05:39 GMT
References: <1380@tank.uchicago.edu>
Sender: news@linus.UUCP
Reply-To: bwk@mbunix (Kort)
Organization: IdeaSync, Inc., Chronos VT
Lines: 28

In article <1380@tank.uchicago.edu> staff_bob@gsbacd.uchicago.edu writes:

 > I think that if we are going to understand intelligence,
 > we need to delve more deeply into the nature and character
 > of the irrational, illogical, non-symbolic, intuitive,
 > superstitious mind, which is to say, the right half of the brain.

I agree.  Except that I would avoid pejorative labels like
illogical or superstitious.

I understand that new branches of formal logic are emerging around
intuitionist and analogical reasoning.  Inferential reasoning
and theory construction are good examples of intelligent behavior
(even if they are error-prone, as history suggests).

Perhaps we can learn more about how the right hemisphere's
parallel processor supports such modes of thinking as combinatorial
reasoning (brain teasers), intuition, analogy, inference, and theory
construction.  With greater understanding of these forms of
information processing, we can achieve two worthwhile objectives:
First, we can imbue silicon information processors with these
abilities.  And more importantly, we can learn how to refine and
improve these faculties in our own carbon-based neural networks.

I, for one, would love to clean up my inefficient and erratic
right-hemisphere and install some decent code.

--Barry Kort