James> Jef Allbright <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: Russell Wallace
James> wrote:
>> Syntactic ambiguity isn't the problem. The reason computers don't
>> understand English is nothing to do with syntax, it's because they
>> don't understand the world.
>> It's easy to parse "The cat sat on the mat" into
>> sit cat
>>
James> on
>> mat past
>>
>> But the computer still doesn't understand the sentence, because it
>> doesn't know what cats, mats and the act of sitting _are_. (The
>> best test of such understanding is not language - it's having the
>> computer draw an animation of the action.)
James> Russell, I agree, but it might be clearer if we point out that
James> humans don't understand the world either. We just process these
James> symbols within a more encompassing context.
James, I would like to know what you mean by "understand".
In my view, what humans do is the example we have of understanding,
the word should be defined so as to have a reasonably precise meaning,
and to include the observed phenomenon.
You apparently have something else in mind by understanding.
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