Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the cognitivist view of mind on which it is based, represent the last stage of the rationalist tradition in philosophy. This tradition begins when Socrates assumes that intelligence is based on principles and when Plato adds the requirement that these principles must be strict rules, not based on taken-for-granted background understanding. This philosophical position, refined by Hobbes, Descartes and Liebniz, is finally converted into a research programme by Herbert Simon and Allen Newell. That research programme is now in trouble, so we must return to its source and question Socrates’ assumption that intelligence consists in solving problems by following rules, and that one acquires the necessary rules by abstracting them from specific cases. A phenomenological description of skill acquisition suggests that the acquisition of expertise moves in just the opposite direction: from abstract rules to particular cases. This description of expertise accounts for the difficulties that have confronted AI for the last decade.
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© 1990 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Dreyfus, H.L. (1990). Is Socrates to Blame for Cognitivism?. In: Göranzon, B., Florin, M. (eds) Artifical Intelligence, Culture and Language: On Education and Work. The Springer Series on Artificial Intelligence and Society. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1729-2_24
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-1729-2_24
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