Locating generic tasks

This paper contains a philosophical examination of the generic task methodology as developed by B. Chandrasekaran and others. Two phases in the evolution of this methodology are discerned. The earlier, "Platonic" phase resulted in a methodology in which the notions of "task" and "method" were very closely coupled. This led to a tension between two functions of generic tasks: the conceptualization of a task would ipso facto include some commitment to an AI method, but typically, the criteria for a task analysis are different from those for choosing an AI method. In the later phase of the generic task methodology, a generic task is to be seen as an analysis of a task, issuing in a task structure. The connection between tasks and the methods for their performance is loosened, but not severed. This entails that the same philosophical problems re-emerge, albeit in a less virulent form. If the task structure is to be seen as an analysis of the task, then that impairs its function as an AI methodology, and vice versa. This paper concludes with the setting out of a thoroughgoing anti-realist philosophy of mind which enables the generic task view to avoid many of these problems.