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1 *Foreword*
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2
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3 Brian Cantwell Smith was born in Montreal, Canada, on 1 December 1949.
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4 Growing up first there and later in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he
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5 remains a Canadian citizen. Multiple allegiances, sometimes
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6 conflicting but mostly complementary, have characterized both his
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7 personal and intellectual life ever since.
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8
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9 He started undergraduate study at Oberlin College in Ohio in 1967,
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10 where his interests included both physics and religion but left after
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11 only two years, travelling first to visit the Quaker community
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12 Argenta, British Columbia, and ending up in Ottawa where he started
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13 work as a programmer at the Division of Physics laboratory of the
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14 National Research Council of Canada, working on a project jointly
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15 involving Fermilab in Chicago and the Lawrence Research Laboratory in
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16 Berkeley. Working at all three sites on PDP 9 and PDP 15
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17 microcomputers, he "programmed like crazy" in machine language,
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18 building systems for experimental control and data gathering.
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19
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20 When the project ended Brian moved back to the family home in
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21 Cambridge, and started taking classes at the Massachusetts Institute
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22 of Technology (MIT), studying what was then known as Social Inquiry,
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23 in particular the politics of high technology. But it quickly became
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24 apparent that the understanding of computing that the social
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25 scientists were critiquing was not the computing that he knew as a
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26 programmer, what he later came to refer to as "computing in the wild".
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27
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28 "What drove me out of Social Inquiry and back to [Computer Science] was
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29 needing to be back in the practice. That skill was not somthing that
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30 people on the outside understood."
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31
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32 Brian had realised that in order to legitimately critique Computer
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33 Science, he needed to get clear on what computing really is: "I had to
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34 go into the heart of the beast, as it were". So he applied for the PhD
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35 program in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and
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36 began taking classes there.
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37
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38 When the MIT administration discovered Brian didn't have an
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39 undergraduate degree, and so couldn't be registered for graduate
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40 study, Patrick Winston, the newly-appointed head of the Artificial
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41 Intelligence Laboratory, gave Brian an informal oral exam in topics
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42 from the MIT undergraduate computer science curriculum and awarded him
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43 the credits necessary for a degree, clearing the way for his admission
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44 to the graduate program.
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45
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46 In 1976 Terry Winograd, who had left MIT to join the Computer Science
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47 Lab at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), invited Brian to
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48 spend the summer in the Understander Group there, where he joined in
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49 the development of KRL, a Knowledge Representation Language, which
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50 came to embody some of the ideas that were developed in his Masters
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51 and PhD dissertations [refs].
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52
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53 These biographical details bring us to the brink of Brian's
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54 professional life, and to the time and place where we first met. The
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55 point made above about multiple allegiances can be succinctly
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56 summarized by a list of the positions he has occupied since the
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57 completion of his PhD a few years later:
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58
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59 * Member of the Scientific Staff, Xerox PARC
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60 * Director, Xerox PARC System Sciences Lab
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61 * Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University
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62 * Founding member of Stanford University's Center for the Study of
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63 Language and Information
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64 * Founding member and first president, Computer Professionals for
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65 Social Responsibility
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66 * President of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology
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67 * Professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, and Philosophy,
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68 Indiana University
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69 * Kimberly J. Jenkins University Distinguished Professor of
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70 Philosophy and New Technologies, Duke University
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71 * Dean of the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto
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72 * Invited keynote speaker, _Défaire l'Occident_, Plainartige, France
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73 * Professor of Information, Philosophy, Cognitive Science, and the
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74 History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of
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75 Toronto
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76 * Senior Fellow, Massey College, University of Toronto
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77 * Reid Hoffman Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Human,
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78 University of Toronto
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79
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80 It was during Brian's years in Palo Alto at PARC, at first just for
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81 the summer and then full-time, that the foundations were laid for the
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82 work that led to this book.
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83
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84 "As an exercise in using KRL representational structures, Brian
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85 Smith tried to describe the KRL data structures themselves in
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86 KRL-0. A brief sketch was completed, and in doing it we were made
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87 much more aware of the ways in which the language was inconsistent
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88 and irregular. This initial sketch was the basis for much of the
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89 development in KRL-1." [ref. Bobrow and Winograd 1978, "Experience
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90 with KRL-O: One Cycle of a Knowledge Representation Language", in
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91 _Proceedings of the Fifth International Joint Conference on
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92 Artificial Intelligence_, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Burlington,
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93 MA. Available online at
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94 https://www.ijcai.org/Proceedings/77-1/Papers/032.pdf].
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95
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96 Brian's input into the (never completed) KRL-1 meant that not only
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97 could some parts of a system's data be _about_ other parts, but that
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98 this would be more than just commentary. It would actually play a role
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99 in the system's operation. For KRL-1, this was initially motivated by
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100 a desire to formulate aspects of knowledge representation such as
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101 negation and disjunction as, if you will, knowledge about knowledge,
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102 rather than as primitives built into the vocabulary of the
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103 representation language itself. [elaborate this with reference to
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104 old-style Semantic Nets and Bobrow and Norman ?]
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105
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106 Brian's development of this idea, which he termed 'reflection', is
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107 documented in the papers gathered in _Legacy_. But its title
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108 notwithstanding, this book is _not_ a recapitulation of that work.
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109
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110 There was an assumption at the heart of Brian's reflective
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111 architectures, which was initially expected to occupy just one section
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112 of one chapter of his PhD, as signalled in its preliminary outline
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113 Table of Contents. But its resolution proved to be much more
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114 problematic than expected, to the extent that it has taken
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115 a lifetime of work for Brian to bring it clearly into focus.
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116
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117 Looking back it seems that this difficulty acted rather like the grit
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118 in the oyster, stimulating Brian's wholesale reconsideration of the
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119 nature of computation, and Computer Science as currently practiced,
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120 which _is_ what this book is about.
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121
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122 You'll have to read the book to find out what that assumption was, and
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123 the details of the critique of Computer Science that it led Brian to.
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124
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125 It may seem rather presumptuous of me to suggest that this one person
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126 has accurately diagnosed a problem that a whole field of enquiry has
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127 missed, to the point where they've ended up altogether stuck, unable
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128 to see what they've missed. The point of the list offered above of
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129 Brian's achievements and the manifest breadth of his background it
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130 testifies to will I hope give sufficient grounds for suggesting that
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131 it is at least possible that this indeed just might be worth checking
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132 out.
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133
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134 As Brian himself said about this recently "That this is important
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135 needs to be said. And it's not about _me_, that is, it's not
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136 important because I say it is." That it's important to him does
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137 however mean that his claim deserves our attention.
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138
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139 This is not an easy book to read, but it's a very important book, so
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140 it's worth the effort. As Brian himself has said, it's written rather
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141 like a detective story, in which the same underlying set of facts is
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142 explored repeatedly, getting closer each time to a complete and
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143 self-consistent picture. When I first read it, I said to Brian more
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144 than once "But you keeping using [some term], and it's clear you mean
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145 it in some important, technical, sense, but you haven't _defined_ it".
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146 And he said, "Look, what I've writen should be read more like novel
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147 than like a manual. What things mean will gradually take shape. Be
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148 patient".
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149
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150 If you care about computer science, either as a practioner, or a
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151 theorist, or a concerned citizen, this book matters for you. It's
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152 conclusions matter, even if parts of it are not meant for you. So
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153 even if you find it hard, as a computer programmer, to see why you
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154 should care if the theorists have got it wrong, be patient. If you're
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155 a theorist, and you find Brian's critique at best irrelevant, and at
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156 worst aggresive, obnoxius and founded in misunderstanding, be patient.
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157 If you're a citizen, and the technical details are off-putting, be
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158 patient.
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159
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160 If you _are_ patient, and stay the course, when you get to the end you
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161 will realise that you actually do understand the terminology now, and
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162 that even though the work that remains is hugely challenging, and
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163 perhaps only imperfectly grasped by Brian himself, much less the rest
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164 of us, getting it done matters for all of us. As practioners and
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165 theorists, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to make Brian's
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166 vision a reality. As citizens, we need to cheer from the sidelines,
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167 and keep asking questions. We owe him that much.
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168
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169 Henry S. Thompson, Toronto and Edinburgh, November 2024.
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170
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171 *Epigraph*
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172
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173 Therefore, I close with the following dramatic but also perfectly
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174 serious claim: cognitive science and artificial intelligence cannot
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175 succeed in their own essential aims unless and until they can
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176 understand and/or implement genuine freedom and the capacity to
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177 love.
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178
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179 John Haugeland, "Authentic Intentionality", 2002
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