Philosophical Foundations of AI

Artificial Intelligence was born in 1956 as the off-spring of the newly-created cognitivist paradigm of cognition. As such, it inherited a strong philosophical legacy of functionalism, dualism, and positivism. This legacy found its strongest statement some 20 years later in the physical symbol systems hypothesis, a conjecture that deeply influenced the evolution of AI in subsequent years. Recent history has seen a swing away from the functionalism of classical AI toward an alternative position that re-asserts the primacy of embodiment, development, interaction, and, more recently, emotion in cognitive systems, focussing now more than ever on enactive models of cognition. Arguably, this swing represents a true paradigm shift in our thinking. However, the philosophical foundations of these approaches -- phenomenology -- entail some far-reaching ontological and epistemological commitments regarding the nature of a cognitive system, its reality, and the role of its interaction with its env...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: AI50
• Authors: David Vernon, Dermot Furlong
• Keywords: AI50 2006, Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive System, Paradigm Shift, Strong Philosophical Legacy