Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!nsc!voder!dtg.nsc.com!andrew From: andrew@dtg.nsc.com (Lord Snooty @ The Giant Poisoned Electric Head ) Newsgroups: comp.ai Subject: Re: Fwd: A Test for "Understanding" Summary: understanding^2 Message-ID: <141@daedalus.nsc.com> Date: 9 Jan 90 23:03:06 GMT References: <1990Jan9.202327.24770@athena.mit.edu> Organization: National Semiconductor, Santa Clara Lines: 21 I haven't seen any exposition of the "neural" way of viewing "understanding". In this paradigm, the internal universe of the machine consists purely of associations ("resonances", if you like). The "richness of understanding" then corresponds to the sum total of category activations, weak and strong, which are stimulated by the subject of the "understanding". One new activated category clearly is a poor candidate for "understanding", whereas a whole slew of resultant partial and full activations corresponds to a "fuller understanding". In this case, many memory traces are, to a greater or lesser extent, simultaneously present and provide a "feel" for the subject at hand. This view of understanding can therefore be seen as a graded model, whereby "degree of understanding" lies on a continuous scale. In the case where a novel concept is presented, and gives rise to (a) new association(s) with previously-learned nets of association, this can be viewed as a 'deep level of understanding", since it gives rise to the "aha!" effect. My $0.02. -- ........................................................................... Andrew Palfreyman andrew@dtg.nsc.com Albania before April!