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Article 4360 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of Understanding
Message-ID: <1992Mar9.183429.7401@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 9 Mar 92 18:34:29 GMT
References: <8diu35K00WBNE3KbNS@andrew.cmu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 31

In article <8diu35K00WBNE3KbNS@andrew.cmu.edu> fb0m+@andrew.cmu.edu (Franklin Boyle) writes:
>Andrzej Pindor writes (in response to my post):
>
>>So humans are *non-physical* pattern matching systems? How do we do it?

>No, I didn't say they were non-physical, just that the physical process
>of pattern matching which occurs in digital computers, for example, is
>not the physical way that humans recognize patterns.  *How* the voltage
>combinations are causal is different.

 The problem here is with the term "pattern matching".  This term implies,
or at least suggests, that a current pattern is compared with a library
of patterns for a match.  However things don't have to work that way.
It is very likely that the brain is a "pattern recognition" system, but
is not a "pattern matching" system.  That is, it uses various clues to
recognize patterns, but there is no such thing as a library of stored
patterns available for comparison.

 Likewise there is no reason computers can not be used for "pattern
recognition" systems.  The fact that most recognition system are based
on pattern matching is only a reflection on the limitations of current
software.  There is no inherent reason that recognition must be based
on matching.  Indeed there are many reasons to suspect that a good
rapid recognition system with some ability to learn is the key to
emulation of the behavior of the mind.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


