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\address 
Killam Program    
The Canada Council
P.O.Box 1047
Ottawa, Ontario
Canada K1P 5V8 
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Attention: N. Jackson

Dear Mr. Jackson:

I am not optimistic about the prospects of Dr. Shanker's project. His
concept of rule-following involving an understanding of the rules and
apparently derivative from Wittgenstein, has never been used in AI research.
He will, after several years, tell AI researchers that they aren't doing what
they never said they were doing.

Philosophical work on AI is certainly desirable, but it requires use of formal
logical methods, and there is no hint of this in the proposal or in the
papers I was able to find in Stanford University's library system.
(I was unable to find the 1985 and 1986 references 19, 21, 36, 37 and 39 and
had to settle for 12, 14 and 17 of which only the former is even slightly relevant
to the present proposal, but all these struck me as rather pedestrian).

John Searle or Hubert Dreyfus at the philosophy department of the University
of California would be more sympathetic with the point of view expressed in
Shanker's proposal.  You might ask them for evaluations of its prospects.

Aaron Sloman (Essex University) or Daniel Dennett (Tufts University) are
philosophers who are likely to be less sympathetic.  Incidently, I don't
see any references to previous philosophical work on this topic in the proposal.

\closing
Sincerely,    

John McCarthy    
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