ON BABIES AND BATHWATER - A CAUTIONARY TALE

One should not throw out the baby with the bathwater, according to an old aphorism. Some popular recent positions in Al thinking have done j ust this, we suggest, by rejecting the useful idea of mental represent ations in their overenthusiastic zeal to correct some simplifications and naiveties in the way traditional AI ideas have sometimes been unde rstood. These ''situated'' perspectives correctly emphasize that agent s live in a social world, using their environments to help guide their actions without needing to always plan their futures in detail; but t hey incorrectly conclude that the very idea of mental representation i s mistaken. This perspective has its intellectual roots in parts of re cent sociological thinking which reject the entire fabric of western s cience. We discuss these ideas and disputes in the form of an illustra ted fable concerning nannies and babies.