What Computers Can't Do
Dreyfus argued that human competence rests on embodiment, context and skill, none of which reduces to explicit rules.
Why it matters
The first systematic philosophical critique of the field pointed at exactly the place where the symbolic approach then stalled for a decade.
The argument draws on Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty: an expert does not apply rules but sees a situation whole. The field answered with ridicule, and Dreyfus's 1967 loss to Mac Hack VI was recalled for years. His prediction about micro-worlds nevertheless held. He later granted that connectionism was closer to his position than rule-based systems were.