Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Follow the author
OK
What Computers Still Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason Revised ed. Edition
Purchase options and add-ons
At a time when researchers were proposing grand plans for general problem solvers and automatic translation machines, Dreyfus predicted that they would fail because their conception of mental functioning was naive, and he suggested that they would do well to acquaint themselves with modern philosophical approaches to human beings. What Computers Can't Do was widely attacked but quietly studied. Dreyfus's arguments are still provocative and focus our attention once again on what it is that makes human beings unique.
- ISBN-100262540673
- ISBN-13978-0262540674
- EditionRevised ed.
- PublisherThe MIT Press
- Publication dateOctober 30, 1992
- LanguageEnglish
- Dimensions5.44 x 1.03 x 8.06 inches
- Print length429 pages
Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular AgeHubert DreyfusPaperback$15.47 shipping
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : The MIT Press; Revised ed. edition (October 30, 1992)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 429 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0262540673
- ISBN-13 : 978-0262540674
- Item Weight : 1.15 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.44 x 1.03 x 8.06 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #514,582 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #946 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics
- #2,473 in Behavioral Sciences (Books)
- #13,426 in Unknown
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Hubert Dreyfus is Professor of Philosophy in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. After receiving his Ph.D. from Harvard University, he taught at MIT, before coming to Berkeley in l968. Dreyfus has been a Guggenheim Fellow, and has received research grants from both the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He holds a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Erasmus University, Rotterdam, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
You can follow him on Twitter @hubertdreyfus; or on Facebook at “All Things Shining”.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
In drawing attention to his muse Heidegger, Dreyfus is very critical of the philosophical tradition, which relied primarily on reason. Yet reason, which Dreyfus does not define, is the central focus of his argument for being human. His method is primarily his ability to doubt that computers can think, i.e., I can’t think, therefore, I can’t be human. Is this the tradition in disguise or what?
Of course, his argument goes much deeper than just thinking, which computers do best in the form of calculating, etc. It has to do with their inability to function in the world like humans, which is more of a problem for robots than computers per se.
Humans are prone to make mistakes, especially when confronted with new environments or handling complex systems like spacecraft. Engineers must design systems in ways to question the appropriateness of human behavior. Is it safe to do such a thing at this time? Of critical importance in the whole study of AI is not whether computers can do what humans do, but whether computers can support, correct, and enhance what humans do.
Fifty years from now when science moves information processing from the digital to the molecular level, new forms of knowledge will emerge, which will be a call to philosophers to reinvent the tradition and reawaken interest in Plato, Descartes, and Kant. Then some philosophy professor will write a book titled Why Computers Can Think And Man Still Can’t and end the debate.
Dreyfus traces the program from its early successes in the middle of the last century to the abandonment of all the major players at the end. In doing so he provides an excellent explanation into the philosophical misconceptions that led (and still lead) many to overestimate the prospects of this program. He draws on Heidegger and Wittgenstein to correct a flawed picture of what it is to "know" that is still prevalent in Western thought.
This book and Dreyfus' life work are very notable accomplishments and demonstrate the powerful of insightful humanistic enquiry in our increasingly scientific and technical age.
Basically there are two types of mistakes made by Minsky and many others:
1. believing they were getting close to understanding human thought,
2. repeatedly announcing same to the world.
The philosophy of Dreyfus in the first 300 pages is largely concerned with fallacious assumptions made by AI researchers. Finally in the last 50 pages (350 page book) he settles down and gives us some interesting concepts that should be understood if we are to seek AI at the human level. He develops the concept of "nonformal behavior" - which we humans usually learn by generalizing examples and following intuition without use of formal rules. Examples: chess at the gestalt master level, and disambiguation of broken sentences.
Dreyfus acknowledges the possible importance of neural network architectures, but dismisses them as outside the scope of his critique. He touches on the poor idea of AI trying to program a full functioning adult, and further carries out a critique of machine learning ("reinforcement learning").
The most important point he makes is that of nonformal behavior -- the non-logical almost Zen-like process that humans must go through. The irony is that we have to struggle with our nonformal thinking to do simple formal tasks such as long division; whereas the computer must struggle with its built-in hard logic to attempt nonformal tasks such as pattern recognition.
The book is for the most part quite dated, but nevertheless, it is very worthwhile reading for anyone in a serious pursuit of machine intelligence. My criticism of his style is just that. I have only a minor criticism of the intelligent content and his restrictions in scope.






