Abstract
Machine understanding is the term introduced by authors to denote understanding by a machine and is referring to the new area of research the aim of which is investigating the possibility of building the machine with the ability to understand. A machine to be able to understand needs to imitate the way in which humans understand and is based on the assumption that the results of understanding by the machine (SUS) can be evaluated according to the rules applied for evaluation of human understanding. Machine understanding will be defined in Chap. 4 in the context of both human understanding and existing systems that can be regarded as the simplest understanding systems. This chapter is not intended as a survey of literature on the vast topic concerning understanding, but rather as a presentation of the point of view of selected thinkers on this topic and a discussion of some aspects of understanding considered to have implication for material presented in other chapters of this book.