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Article 4498 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: kimhock@csar.uucp (Ng Kim Hock)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Definition of understanding
Keywords: meaning, understanding
Message-ID: <kimhock.92@csar.uucp>
Date: 17 Mar 92 06:06:13 GMT
References: <1992Mar10.204754.1137@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Mar11.164816.18444@psych.toronto.edu> <1992Mar12.162059.28643@gpu.utcs.utoronto.ca> <1992Mar13.000150.9603@psych.toronto.edu>
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You are warned that the following is a wild conjecture!

PAIN and DISCOMFORT and an urge to find a causal relationship could well 
give rise to a state that constitutes ignorance, and understanding may be a 
state of comfort that is produced after some pattern matching is satisfied 
and the need to search for further matching ceased!
(I say this because I try to ask myself why it was that when I was studying 
Maths, at some stage, I did not understand and when I believe I did
understood... and it seems that it is linked with a search for a causal 
match)

Once a match is found, the pattern is somehow remembered and any further 
query on the pattern easily yield a match and we tell ourselve the strange 
phenomenon is understanding. 

Therefore as long as the machine cannot feel pain, it cannot understand...

But this concept of understanding may be only artificially important and 
not that critical. Perhaps the portability of semantics representation may 
be more important that the ability of the machine to understand. Combination 
of semantic representation together with a feeling of pain perceived by the 
observer gives the impression that the machine understand....

Pardon me if I waste your bandwidth... But I cannot stand the urge to voice 
this out...
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