Harman says his book is primarily concerned with human intelligence, and "may or may not be of much interest for artificial intelligence." Nevertheless, the first reviewers on the publisher's jacket are Jon Doyle and Bob Moore, both of whom applaud the book for its value to the AI community. Moore says of the book that "it brings out more forcefully than anything yet published the difference between reasoning and 'theroem-proving,' " which is quite a comment, considering that all of us have written on the subject.
The text is peppered with terminology that AI people will think is their own. Harman constantly maintains a distinction between "explicit belief" and "implicit belief," which is a natural AI practice, but not yet widespread among epistemologists. Even more striking is Harman's depiction of reasoning as "reasoned change in view." The adjectival use of "reasoned" is curious, and unmistakably like Doyle's "reasoned arguments" in TMS.
Change in View is a quick sketch. Harman uses an expository style that is unusual for a philosopher, and computer scientists should welcome this. The style allows fast access to the basic ideas, and is typified by discussion rather than dialectic. Harman also provides a summary of almost every chapter, which can be skimmed easily (hence, I won't attempt a comprehensive summary of the material here). The result is a book that can be read by an AI audience with less time and effort than what is required for many AI papers.
Change in View advances theses about effective reasoning by non-ideal reasoners, i.e., by humans, and perhaps also by other computationally bounded reasoners. It naturally divides into two parts, the first part having to do with beliefs (Chapters 1-7), and the second part about intentions (Chapters 8-9). The latter part is mostly analytic philosophy, and perhaps of interest to