Rigor mortis: A response to Nilsson's "Logic and artificial intelligence"

Logicism has contributed greatly to progress in AI by emphasizing the central role of mental content and representational vocabulary in intelligent systems. Unfortunately, the logicists' dream of a completely use-independent characterization of knowledge has drawn their attention away from these fundamental AI problems, leading instead to a concentration on purely formalistic issues in deductive inference and model-theoretic "semantics". In addition, their failure to resist the lure of formalistic modes of expression has unnecessarily curtailed the prospects for intellectual interaction with other AI researchers.