The society of mind: Marvin Minsky☆

Abstract Artificial intelligence is fundamentally an engineering discipline; our collective goal of constructing an intelligent artifact is fundamentally an engineering one. Good engineering builds on good science. Good science, quite frequently, builds on good mathematics. The Society of Mind does not pretend to be good engineering or good mathematics. My aim in this review is to discuss the question of whether or not it is good science. I will do this by examining two separate but related issues. The first involves Minsky's abandonment of the usual methods of scientific inquiry and a discussion of the problems to which this leads; the second is an analysis of Minsky's criticisms of formal logic and its role in AI.