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\noindent {\it Artificial Intelligence: The Very Idea}. By JOHN HAUGELAND.
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1985. xii + 290 pp. $14.95.
ISBN 0-262-08153-9.  A Bradford Book.

	John Haugeland, a philosopher, has got the ``very idea'' essentially
correct in this determinedly non-technical book.  Unfortunately,
discussing the philosophy of AI non-technically has imposes as severe
limitations as does a non-technical discussion of the philosophy of
mathematics or quantum mechanics.  Besides that, he omits to
discuss the use of mathematical logic in AI --- which could
be discussed non-technically to a considerable extent.  We begin
with the positive content of the book, after which we will discuss
the limitations of the non-technical approach which characterizes
almost all writing about AI by philosophers, even in the professional
philosophical literature.
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haugel[f86,jmc]		Review of John Haugland's ``Artificial Intelligence:

Haugeland perhaps ignores Tarskian semantics.
- perhaps in both senses.

p..98 Chaitin

p. 112 GOFAI doesn't rest on the theory that intelligence is computation.
The theory is that intelligent behavior can be realized computationally.
The extent to which human intelligence is realized digitally is
a matter for psychologists and physiologists.
For example, the chemistry of hormones may play intervene in human
thought processes in an analog way.

The book is misleadingly non-technical.

Logic is ignored.

The state of AI technology.

The idea of AI doesn't actually depend on whether human thinking is
essentially computational, although I think it is substantially true.
Suppose that an important part of thinking is analog.  The most
plausible hypothesis in that direction is that the quantitative
amounts of the different hormones that are released determine
certain decisions.  Then we might be prepared to supplement the
digital computations representing reasoning by a digital simulation
of the important analog processes.  This would work unless these
processes were too extensive to be economically simulated.

Artificial intelligence is a science under development.  It has
substantial conceptual problems.  Under these conditions it is
not an easy task to summarize the field for the layman --- or
even for the practitioner.  Maybe it's as though someone tried
to summarize atomic physics in 1910.