The Metaphysical Character of the Criticisms Raised Against the Use of Probability for Dealing with Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence Carlotta Piscopo Æ Mauro Birattari Received: 6 February 2007 / Accepted: 21 April 2008 / Published online: 16 May 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract In artificial intelligence (AI), a number of criticisms were raised against the use of probability for dealing with uncertainty. All these criticisms, except what in this article we call the non-adequacy claim, have been eventually confuted. The non-adequacy claim is an exception because, unlike the other criticisms, it is exquisitely philosophical and, possibly for this reason, it was not discussed in the technical literature. A lack of clarity and understanding of this claim had a major impact on AI. Indeed, mostly leaning on this claim, some scientists developed an alternative research direction and, as a result, the AI community split in two schools: a probabilistic and an alternative one. In this article, we argue that the non- adequacy claim has a strongly metaphysical character and, as such, should not be accepted as a conclusive argument against the adequacy of probability. Keywords Artificial intelligence Á Probability Á Alternative approaches Á Randomness Á Uncertainty Introduction Antony Eagle (2005) has recently argued that the concept of randomness, as presented in the current philosophical literature, is misleading and that this can entail serious consequences due to the central role that randomness plays in many scientific disciplines. C. Piscopo (&) Á M. Birattari IRIDIA, CoDE, Universite ´ Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium e-mail: piscopo@iridia.ulb.ac.be M. Birattari e-mail: mbiro@ulb.ac.be 123 Minds & Machines (2008) 18:273–288 DOI 10.1007/s11023-008-9097-3