The Evolution
11
vated at the same time (this will be termed a Type I situation); or a
set of whole-to-whole links may be accompanied by a set of part-whole
links (this will be termed a Type II situation); or two sets of
whole-to-whole links may be activated at the same time (this will be
termed a Type III situation).
An example of a Type I situation would be if memory ambiguously
perceived something that was bright and yellow. Obviously this would
be a case where one set of part-whole links emanated toward those con-
cepts containing "brightness" (e.g. "light bulb," "flashlight," "sun,"
etc.), while another set of part-whole links emanated toward every
concept containing "yellowness" (e.g. "butter," "banana," "sun," etc.),
where an optimized memory could be expected to disambiguate "bright
yellow" as some concept common to both lists—thus "sun" might be
yielded. To be more specific, all other things being equal, memory
would disambiguate "bright yellow" as that concept containing "bright-
ness" and "yellowness" that it has seen most often.
An example of a Type II situation would be if memory perceived
something ambiguous, after having earlier acquired some pertinent
whole-to-whole information. For instance, if memory perceived a
hospital and later ambiguously perceived a knife, it could use the
whole-to-whole links of "hospital" (which tend to yield "doctor,"
"nurse," "scalpel," etc.) in combination with the part-whole links of
"knife" (which tend to yield "pocketknife," "kitchen knife," "scalpel,"
etc.) to arrive at "scalpel" as a reasonable disambiguation of "knife."