Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!oliveb!apple!voder!pyramid!prls!philabs!linus!mbunix!bwk From: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry W. Kort) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Letter to THE NEW YORK REVIEW Concerning AI Summary: How I experience the subjective feeling of "understanding". Keywords: Goal Achievement, Epiphany, Insight, Entropy, Serotonin Message-ID: <45441@linus.UUCP> Date: 26 Feb 89 14:24:32 GMT References: <7471@venera.isi.edu> <2447@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk> <509@mmlai.UUCP> Sender: news@linus.UUCP Reply-To: bwk@mbunix.mitre.org (Barry Kort) Organization: Neurotic Netware, Dendrite Faults, NV Lines: 21 In article <2447@crete.cs.glasgow.ac.uk>, (Gilbert Cockton) writes: > The subjective feeling of understanding is vital to much human action. In article <509@mmlai.UUCP> barash@mmlai.UUCP (Steve Barash) responds: > Does this mean you are measuring the importance of subjective > feeling by its effect of observable action? I don't know how others experience "the subjective feeling of understanding", but I experience it as a neurochemical rush when the entropy of my mental models undergoes a dramatic decrease. This happens when the pieces of my mental jigsaw puzzle are finally arranged such that every piece fits in a tight interlocking lattice, and a big picture is revealed in the freshly woven tapestry. My scientific mind calls this mental event "Aha! Insight". My spiritual mind calls it "Epiphany". I claim it is better than eating chocolate to get the same sensation. --Barry Kort