Key Arguments

• Dreyfus states that 'if this phenomenological description of human intelligence is correct, there are in principle reasons why artificial intelligence can never be completely realized,' explicitly framing his critique as one of principled, not merely practical, impossibility.
• Beyond storage issues, he argues 'there are in the last analysis no fixed facts, be they a million or ten million, as Minsky would like to believe,' directly challenging the assumption that a sufficiently large, fixed stock of propositions could ground intelligence.
• He explains that 'Since human beings produce facts, the facts themselves are changed by conceptual revolutions,' so any fact base is historically and conceptually contingent rather than a stable, context‑independent foundation.
• He anticipates a possible AI/philosophical response: 'Finally, if the philosopher or artificial intelligence researcher proposes to meet this objection by formalizing the human needs which generate this changing context,' but insists that such a move runs into 'the source of this same difficulty.'
• The source of difficulty is that 'Indeterminate needs and goals and the experience of gratification which guides their determination cannot be simulated on a digital machine whose only mode of existence is a series of determinate states,' so the very indeterminacy that allows needs and contexts to evolve resists digital representation.
• He emphasizes that 'it is just because these needs are never completely determined for the individual and for mankind as a whole that they are capable of being made more determinate,' linking openness of needs to the possibility of historical and personal development.
• From this, he concludes that through these processes 'human nature can be retroactively changed,' suggesting that the human background of needs and concerns is historically transformable in a way incompatible with a system of fixed, determinate digital states.
• Taken together, these points show that neither an exhaustive fact base nor a formalized table of needs can capture the open‑ended, self‑modifying character of human intelligence and world‑constitution, which is why AI cannot be 'completely realized' on a digital architecture.

Source Quotes

Since the data about the world may well be infinite and the formalization of our form-of-life may well be impossible, it would be more reasonable to suppose that digital storage techniques can never be up to the task. Moreover, if this phenomenological description of human intelligence is correct, there are in principle reasons why artificial intelligence can never be completely realized. Besides the technological problem posed by storing a great number of bits of neutral data, there are in the last analysis no fixed facts, be they a million or ten million, as Minsky would like to believe.

Moreover, if this phenomenological description of human intelligence is correct, there are in principle reasons why artificial intelligence can never be completely realized. Besides the technological problem posed by storing a great number of bits of neutral data, there are in the last analysis no fixed facts, be they a million or ten million, as Minsky would like to believe. Since human beings produce facts, the facts themselves are changed by conceptual revolutions.

Besides the technological problem posed by storing a great number of bits of neutral data, there are in the last analysis no fixed facts, be they a million or ten million, as Minsky would like to believe. Since human beings produce facts, the facts themselves are changed by conceptual revolutions. Finally, if the philosopher or artificial intelligence researcher proposes to meet this objection by formalizing the human needs which generate this changing context, he is faced with the source of this same difficulty.

Since human beings produce facts, the facts themselves are changed by conceptual revolutions. Finally, if the philosopher or artificial intelligence researcher proposes to meet this objection by formalizing the human needs which generate this changing context, he is faced with the source of this same difficulty. Indeterminate needs and goals and the experience of gratification which guides their determination cannot be simulated on a digital machine whose only mode of existence is a series of determinate states.

Finally, if the philosopher or artificial intelligence researcher proposes to meet this objection by formalizing the human needs which generate this changing context, he is faced with the source of this same difficulty. Indeterminate needs and goals and the experience of gratification which guides their determination cannot be simulated on a digital machine whose only mode of existence is a series of determinate states. Yet, it is just because these needs are never completely determined for the individual and for mankind as a whole that they are capable of being made more determinate, and human nature can be retroactively changed

Indeterminate needs and goals and the experience of gratification which guides their determination cannot be simulated on a digital machine whose only mode of existence is a series of determinate states. Yet, it is just because these needs are never completely determined for the individual and for mankind as a whole that they are capable of being made more determinate, and human nature can be retroactively changed

Key Concepts

• Moreover, if this phenomenological description of human intelligence is correct, there are in principle reasons why artificial intelligence can never be completely realized.
• Besides the technological problem posed by storing a great number of bits of neutral data, there are in the last analysis no fixed facts, be they a million or ten million, as Minsky would like to believe.
• Since human beings produce facts, the facts themselves are changed by conceptual revolutions.
• Finally, if the philosopher or artificial intelligence researcher proposes to meet this objection by formalizing the human needs which generate this changing context, he is faced with the source of this same difficulty.
• Indeterminate needs and goals and the experience of gratification which guides their determination cannot be simulated on a digital machine whose only mode of existence is a series of determinate states.
• Yet, it is just because these needs are never completely determined for the individual and for mankind as a whole that they are capable of being made more determinate,
• and human nature can be retroactively changed

Context

Same concluding passage, where Dreyfus moves from empirical and methodological criticisms of AI to explicit in‑principle arguments against the possibility of complete artificial intelligence, based on the historical mutability of facts and the indeterminate, self-transforming character of human needs and human nature.