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philos[s87,jmc]		AI and philosophy for Daedalus paper

	AI interacts with philosophical problems more intensively
than do other sciences.  Partly this is because philosophy still
asserts jurisdiction over questions relevant to AI, having abandoned
the other sciences, like psychology, long ago.

	Serious research in AI requires taking positions
on issues previously studied only by philosophers.

	Secondly, AI research may have consequences for philosophy itself,
specifically for epistemology.  AI systems must be programmed to achieve
goals in {\it information situations} very like those faced by humans.
The {\it information situation} of an actor is characterized by what
is known, especially about the consequences of actions,


and by what methods are available to obtain more information.

AI and Philosophy

When a naturalistic philosopher addresses himself to the philosophy
of mind, he is apt to talk of language.  Meanings are, first and
foremost, meanings of language.  Language is a social art which
we all acquire on the evidence solely of other people's overt
behavior under publicly recognizable circumstances.  Meanings,
therefore, those very models of mental entities, end up a grist
for the behaviorists mill.  Dewey was explicit on the point: ``Meaning
$\ldots$ is not a psychic existence; it is primarily a property
of behavior.''

J. Dewey, Experience and Nature (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1925,
1958), p. 179.
	
Once we appreciate the institution of language in these terms we see
that there cannot be, in any useful sense, a private language.  This
point was stressed by Dewey in the twenties. ``Soliloquy,'' he wrote,
``is the product and reflex of converse with others'' (170).  Further
along he expanded the point thus: ``Language is specifically a mode of
interaction of at least two beings, a speaker and a hearer; it
presupposes an organized group to which thee creatures belong, and
from whom they have acquired their habits of speech.  It is therefore
a relationship'' (185).  Years later, Wittgenstein also rejected
private language.  When Dewey was writing in this naturalistic vein,
Wittgenstein still held his copy theory of language.

Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, W.V. Quine
Columbia University Press 1969

The copy theory in its various forms stands closer to the main philisophical
tradition, and to the attitude of common sense today. Uncritical semantics 
is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are
labels. To switch languages is to change the labels. Now the naturalist's
primary objection to this view is not an objection to meanings on account
of their being mental entities, though that could be objection enough.
The primary objection persists even if we take the labeled exhibits not as mental
ideas but as Platonic ideas or even as the denoted concrete objects. Semantics
is vitiated by a pernicious mentalism as long as we regard a man's semantics as
somehow determinate in his mind beyond what might be implicit in his
dipositions to overt behavior. It is the very facts about meaning, not the 
entities meant, that must be construed in terms of behavior.