The phenomenological alternative Dreyfus proposes will investigate three neglected but foundational dimensions of intelligent behavior—especially in contrast to CS and AI—namely the role of the body in organizing and unifying experience of objects, and the role of the situation in providing a background that makes behavior orderly without requiring internal rules.

By Hubert L. Dreyfus, from What Computers Can't Do

Key Arguments

  • Dreyfus explicitly frames the forthcoming inquiry as picking up what AI has neglected: 'Taking this suggestion to heart, we shall explore three areas necessarily neglected in CS and AI but which seem to underlie all intelligent behavior.'
  • He names two of these areas in this excerpt: 'the role of the body in organizing and unifying our experience of objects, the role of the situation in providing a background against which behavior can be orderly without being rulelike,' directly linking embodiment and situation to non-rule-governed orderliness.

Source Quotes

The moral is not to abandon useful tools; rather, it is, first, that one should maintain enough perspective to be able to detect the arrival of that inevitable day when the research that can be conducted with these tools is no longer important; and, second, that one should value ideas and insights that are to the point, though perhaps premature and vague and not productive of research at a particular stage of technique and understanding. 2 Taking this suggestion to heart, we shall explore three areas necessarily neglected in CS and AI but which seem to underlie all intelligent behavior: the role of the body in organizing and unifying our experience of objects, the role of the situation in providing a background against which behavior can be orderly without being rulelike, and finally the role of

Key Concepts

  • Taking this suggestion to heart, we shall explore three areas necessarily neglected in CS and AI but which seem to underlie all intelligent behavior: the role of the body in organizing and unifying our experience of objects, the role of the situation in providing a background against which behavior can be orderly without being rulelike, and finally the role of

Context

Closing sentence fragment of the Introduction excerpt, where Dreyfus previews the main phenomenological themes—body and situation—that Part III will develop as alternatives to the rule‑and‑facts model of intelligence.