Artificial intelligence is philosophy

Clark Glymour

pp. 195-207

in: James H. Fetzer (ed), Aspects of artificial intelligence, Berlin, Springer, 1988

Abstract

Artificial intelligence is philosophical explication turned into computer programs. Historically, what we think of as artificial intelligence arose by taking the explications provided by philosophers, and finding computable extensions and applications of them. Developments in artificial intelligence programming technology have tended to make the process of transforming certain sorts of philosophical explications into programs nearly automatic. Production rule systems, for example, exploit the ambiguity between conditional sentences and procedural rules, and permit one to turn theories consisting of a collection of conditionals into a simple program, with little explicit worry about control structure or algorithm design. Nowadays, most of the philosophical theories used in artificial intelligence are not taken from the philosophical literature directly, but that does not make them any the less philosophical. Computer science teaches us that there is more to philosophy than we might have thought, and it contains new and interesting philosophical contributions.