Subjective understanding, computer models of belief systems

Abstract : Modeling human understanding of natural language requires a model of the processes underlying human thought. No two people think exactly alike; different people subscribe to different beliefs and are motivated by different goals in their activities. A theory of subjective understanding has been proposed to account for subjectively-motivated human thinking ranging from ideological belief to human discourse and personality traits. A process-model embodying this theory has been implemented in a computer system, POLITICS. POLITICS models human ideological reasoning in understanding the natural language text of international political events. POLITICS can model either liberal or conservative ideologies. Each ideology produces a different interpretation of the input event. POLITICS demonstrates its understanding by answering questions in natural language question-answer dialogs.