What computers still can't do, 50 years later: Learning from the perspective of Hubert Dreyfus' phenomenology of everyday coping

Abstract

The article brings a theoretical-philosophical analysis of fundamental aspects of the phenomenology of everyday life by Hubert Dreyfus, in order to contribute with a philosophical look at learning beyond the processing of information. The philosopher, who in 1972 published his well-known book What Computers Can't Do, developed a critique to artificial intelligence which makes it possible to understand human cognition beyond the brain, mental and computational representations, based on the centrality of the bodily experience and the body’s coupling with the world. Based on Dreyfus’ ideas, it is argued that the acquisition of knowledge does not happen only in a representational, computational way, but relies on the experience of this body engaged with the world and on the emotions of the learner. It is demonstrated that these ideas are close to enativism, a new approach to cognition that presents an alternative to Cartesianism and is part of a theoretical framework known as the 4Es of Cognition: Embodied, Embedded, Extended and Enactive.