Michael J. Miller

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About

Michael J. Miller is a philosopher and cognitive scientist whose work probes the deep intersections of time, reasoning, and artificial agency. His primary research areas include the philosophy of action, temporal logic, and the foundational challenges of AI reasoning—most notably the frame problem. Miller’s most influential paper, “Stop the world—I want to think” (1991, 11 citations), offers a penetrating analysis of how reason-based actions entangle agents in temporal considerations, even when time is not explicitly stated. He demonstrates this across classic AI puzzles, from blocks-world scenarios to the Yale Shooting Problem, revealing that the frame problem is not merely a technical hurdle but a philosophical knot. His later work, “The Internal Reasoning of Robots” (2017, 4 citations), extends these ideas into modern robotics, exploring how internal reasoning architectures must grapple with temporal dynamics. Though his citation counts are modest, Miller’s contributions are foundational for scholars wrestling with the metaphysics of agency and the limits of computational rationality. His work remains essential reading for anyone seeking to understand why AI systems struggle with the passage of time and the persistence of facts.