Phenomenology and Artificial Intelligence.

Phenomenology is often thought to be irrelevant to artificial-intelligence and cognitive-science research because first-person descriptions do not reach to the level of genuine causal explanations. Although phenomenology taken in this weak sense may not be useful, the method of phenomenology taken m...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Metaphilosophy Vol. 33; no. 1/2; pp. 70 - 83
Main Author: Beavers, Anthony F.
Format: Article
Published: Wiley-Blackwell Jan2002
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Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
Description
Summary:Phenomenology is often thought to be irrelevant to artificial-intelligence and cognitive-science research because first-person descriptions do not reach to the level of genuine causal explanations. Although phenomenology taken in this weak sense may not be useful, the method of phenomenology taken more formally may well produce fruitful results. Husserl’s phenomenological reduction, or epoché, sets the right frame of reference for a science of cognition because it makes explicit the difference between what belongs to cognition and what belongs to the natural world. Isolating this critical difference helps us assign the correct procedures to cognition and describe their functions. A formalized phenomenology of cognition can therefore aid initiatives in cognitive computing.