An Essay Concerning Robotic Understanding

The question of whether a computer can think like a person is once again a hot topic. Somewhat to my surprise, this philosophical question seems to have direct practical implications for AI, especially language understanding. The following analysis has been helpful to me and might be of some value to others. When we use words such as think, understand, and wish, we typically refer to the human experience of these activities. When I want to emphasize this point, I use the notation x/h for human.