Many philosophers contend that Turing’s work provides a conceptual analysis of numerical computability. In (Rescorla, 2007), I dissented. I argued that the problem of deviant notations stymies existing attempts at conceptual analysis. Copeland and Proudfoot respond to my critique. I argue that their putative solution does not succeed. We are still awaiting a genuine conceptual analysis.

The Turing Test is routinely understood as a behaviourist test for machine intelligence. Diane Proudfoot has argued for an alternative interpretation. According to Proudfoot, Turing’s claim that intelligence is what he calls ‘an emotional concept’ indicates that he conceived of intelligence in response-dependence terms. As she puts it: ‘Turing’s criterion for “thinking” is…: x is intelligent if in the actual world, in an unrestricted computer-imitates-human game, x appears intelligent to an average interrogator’. The role of the famous test (...) is thus to provide the conditions in which to examine the average interrogator’s responses. I shall argue that Proudfoot’s analysis falls short. The philosophical literature contains two main models of response-dependence, what I shall call the transparency model and the reference-fixing model. Proudfoot resists the thought that Turing might have endorsed one of these models to the exclusion of the other. But the details of her own analysis indicate that she is, in fact, committed to the claim that Turing’s account of intelligence is grounded in a transparency model, rather than a reference-fixing one. By contrast, I shall argue that while Turing did indeed conceive of intelligence in response-dependence terms, his account is grounded in a reference-fixing model, rather than a transparency one. This is fortunate, because, as an account of intelligence, the transparency model is arguably problematic in a way that the reference-fixing model isn’t. (shrink)

In the 70 years since Alan Turing’s ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ appeared in Mind, there have been two widely-accepted interpretations of the Turing test: the canonical behaviourist interpretation and the rival inductive or epistemic interpretation. These readings are based on Turing’s Mind paper; few seem aware that Turing described two other versions of the imitation game. I have argued that both readings are inconsistent with Turing’s 1948 and 1952 statements about intelligence, and fail to explain the design of his game. (...) I argue instead for a response-dependence interpretation. This interpretation has implications for Turing’s view of free will: I argue that Turing’s writings suggest a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism. The philosophical implications of rethinking Turing’s test go yet further. It is assumed by numerous theorists that Turing anticipated the computational theory of mind. On the contrary, I argue, his remarks on intelligence and free will lead to a new objection to computationalism. (shrink)

The widespread tendency, even within AI, to anthropomorphize machines makes it easier to convince us of their intelligence. How can any putative demonstration of intelligence in machines be trusted if the AI researcher readily succumbs to make-believe? This is (what I shall call) the forensic problem of anthropomorphism. I argue that the Turing test provides a solution. This paper illustrates the phenomenon of misplaced anthropomorphism and presents a new perspective on Turingʼs imitation game. It also examines the role of the (...) Turing test in relation to the current dispute between human-level AI and ‘mindless intelligence’. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Turing proposed a new approach to the concept of thinking, based on his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’; and that the response-dependence interpretation of Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ is a better fit with his writings than orthodox interpretations. The aim of this paper is to clarify the response-dependence interpretation, by addressing such questions as: What did Turing mean by the expression ‘emotional’? Is Turing’s criterion subjective? Are ‘emotional’ judgements decided by social consensus? (...) Turing’s take on these issues impacts current philosophical debates on response-dependent concepts and on the nature of artificial intelligence. (shrink)

We discuss, first, TUring's role in the development of the computer; second, the early history of Artificial Intelligence (to 1956); and third, TUring's fa- mous imitation game, now universally known as the TUring test, which he proposed in cameo form in 1948 and then more fully in 1950 and 1952. Various objections have been raised to Turing's test: we describe some of the most prominent and explain why, in our view, they fail.

In this article the central philosophical issues concerning human-level artificial intelligence (AI) are presented. AI largely changed direction in the 1980s and 1990s, concentrating on building domain-specific systems and on sub-goals such as self-organization, self-repair, and reliability. Computer scientists aimed to construct intelligence amplifiers for human beings, rather than imitation humans. Turing based his test on a computer-imitates-human game, describing three versions of this game in 1948, 1950, and 1952. The famous version appears in a 1950 article in Mind, ‘Computing (...) Machinery and Intelligence’ (Turing 1950). The interpretation of Turing's test is that it provides an operational definition of intelligence (or thinking) in machines, in terms of behavior. ‘Intelligent Machinery’ sets out the thesis that whether an entity is intelligent is determined in part by our responses to the entity's behavior. Wittgenstein frequently employed the idea of a human being acting like a reliable machine. A ‘living reading-machine’ is a human being or other creature that is given written signs, for example Chinese characters, arithmetical symbols, logical symbols, or musical notation, and who produces text spoken aloud, solutions to arithmetical problems, and proofs of logical theorems. Wittgenstein mentions that an entity that manipulates symbols genuinely reads only if he or she has a particular history, involving learning and training, and participates in a social environment that includes normative constraints and further uses of the symbols. (shrink)

According to the early futurist Julian Huxley, human life as we know it is ‘a wretched makeshift, rooted in ignorance’. With modern science, however, ‘the present limitations and miserable frustrations of our existence could be in large measure surmounted’ and human life could be ‘transcended by a state of existence based on the illumination of knowledge’ (1957b, p. 16).

Given actual autonomous systems with capacities for harm and the public’s apparent willingness to take moral advice from large language models (LLMs), Einar Duenger Bohn’s (2024) renewed discussion of the Moral Turing Test (MTT) is timely. Bohn’s aim is to defend an unequivocally behavioural test. In this paper, I argue against this direction. Interpreted as testing mere behaviour, the Turing test is a poor test of either intelligence or moral agency, and neither Bohn’s version of the test nor Allen, Varner (...) and Zinser’s influential (2000) version avoids these problems. Also, the MTT’s advantages as advertised by Bohn do not hold up: it is an open empirical question whether embracing a merely behavioural MTT will significantly reduce the challenges in building a computer to pass the test. This issue aside, I argue that Turing’s actual test is superior to current AI benchmarks and to Bohn’s version of the test. A test of moral reasoning or agency in machines that is based on Turing’s actual test has advantages over current tests of moral reasoning in AI, including versions of the MTT. Such a test is an intriguing possibility still to be investigated. (shrink)

Given actual autonomous systems with capacities for harm and the public’s apparent willingness to take moral advice from large language models (LLMs), Einar Duenger Bohn’s (2024) renewed discussion of the Moral Turing Test (MTT) is timely. Bohn’s aim is to defend an unequivocally behavioural test. In this paper, I argue against this direction. Interpreted as testing mere behaviour, the Turing test is a poor test of either intelligence or moral agency, and neither Bohn’s version of the test nor Allen, Varner (...) and Zinser’s influential (2000) version avoids these problems. Also, the MTT’s advantages as advertised by Bohn do not hold up: it is an open empirical question whether embracing a merely behavioural MTT will significantly reduce the challenges in building a computer to pass the test. This issue aside, I argue that Turing’s actual test is superior to current AI benchmarks and to Bohn’s version of the test. A test of moral reasoning or agency in machines that is based on Turing’s actual test has advantages over current tests of moral reasoning in AI, including versions of the MTT. Such a test is an intriguing possibility still to be investigated. (shrink)

Turing used the expression “emotional” in three distinct ways: to state his philosophical theory of the concept of intelligence, to classify arguments for and against the possibility of machine intelligence, and to describe the education of a “child machine”. The remarks on emotion include several of the most important philosophical claims. This paper analyses these remarks and their significance for current research in Artificial Intelligence.

According to Richard Routley, a comprehensive theory of fiction is impossible, since almost anything is in principle imaginable. In my view, Routley is right: for any purported logic of fiction, there will be actual or imaginable fictions that successfully counterexample the logic. Using the example of ‘impossible’ fictions, I test this claim against theories proposed by Routley’s Meinongian contemporaries and also by Routley himself and his 21st century heirs. I argue that the phenomenon of impossible fictions challenges even today’s modal (...) Meinongians. (shrink)

Three models suggested by Rawls (1971) for conceiving the relation between individual and society are described and critically evaluated. Special attention is given to Rawls's analogies of the problem of mapping the moral sentiments with the problem of mapping linguistic competence and of a social union with participation in a game. Similarities are noted between the theory of justice as fairness and traditional religious conceptions. Both aim to transcend particular interests and both embody perfectionist ideals.

This article considers the motivations of teachers to pursue ongoing professional learning. During recent decades, the international policy context has been characterised by high-stakes accountability, but the implications of this agenda for teachers’ motivations toward professional learning remains under-explored. In this mixed methods study, combining a large teacher survey and in-depth teacher interviews, a new and significant concept of ‘instrumental motivation’ is generated to capture how high-stakes performance management policies damage the motivation of teachers to learn professionally. This innovative approach, (...) employing ordinal factor analysis and inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis inclusive of self-determination theory, reveals how the ‘instrumental motivation’ of teachers should be constrained and argues for the adoption of alternative motivational strategies to support effective professional learning in schools. (shrink)

This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein’s philosophi- cal psychology for the two major contemporary approaches to the relation between language and cognition. As Pinker describes it, on the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ language is ‘an insidious shaper of thought’. According to Pinker’s own widely–shared alternative view, ‘Language is the magnificent faculty that we use to get thoughts from one head to another’. I investigate Wittgenstein’s powerful challenges to the hypothe- sis that language is a device for communicating independently constituted (...) (or individuated) thoughts. I argue that Wittgenstein offers instead a subtle version of the thesis that language determines thought. (shrink)

The modern project of naturalizing intelligence began in the middle of last century, and Alan Turing is one of its most celebrated proponents. The assumption that Turing shared the ontological and methodological commitments of canonical naturalists is based on certain widespread beliefs about Turing—namely, that his test of intelligence is behaviourist and his approach to the mind computationalist. This chapter argues that influential versions of these assumptions are false, and instead that, in his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’, (...) Turing proposed a response-dependence approach to intelligence. Recent objections, however, take the response-dependence interpretation to commit Turing to anti-realism—a philosophical stance that is typically anathema to naturalists. This chapter argues that those objections fail. (shrink)

A standard account of Wittgenstein and Turing is that both were philosophical behaviourists regarding the mind, whereas theorists sympathetic to Wittgenstein typically claim that Wittgenstein was a fierce critic of Turing. Proponents of the latter account align Wittgenstein with AI naysayers; for Wittgenstein, they say, the question Can machines think? is nonsensical or absurd. I shall argue that both the standard and the alternative accounts are myths.

In this entry, we offer a very brief overview of Dorothy Grover's prosentential theory of truth.

This book is a collection of essays on the philosophy of religion, but it draws on contemporary work in the social sciences as well as in philosophy. It examines the ways in which conceptions of God reflect notions of the self that are present in the thought and experience of each author.

Given (1) Wittgensteins externalist analysis of the distinction between following a rule and behaving in accordance with a rule, (2) prima facie connections between rule-following and psychological capacities, and (3) pragmatic issues about training, it follows that most, even all, future artificially intelligent computers and robots will not use language, possess concepts, or reason. This argument suggests that AIs traditional aim of building machines with minds, exemplified in current work on cognitive robotics, is in need of substantial revision.

Alan Turing anticipated many areas of current research incomputer and cognitive science. This article outlines his contributionsto Artificial Intelligence, connectionism, hypercomputation, andArtificial Life, and also describes Turing's pioneering role in thedevelopment of electronic stored-program digital computers. It locatesthe origins of Artificial Intelligence in postwar Britain. It examinesthe intellectual connections between the work of Turing and ofWittgenstein in respect of their views on cognition, on machineintelligence, and on the relation between provability and truth. Wecriticise widespread and influential misunderstandings of theChurch–Turing thesis (...) and of the halting theorem. We also explore theidea of hypercomputation, outlining a number of notional machines thatcompute the uncomputable. (shrink)

Two religious interpretations of experience, the mystical and the numinous, are presented. Two constructions of each are explored, one involving a sense of immediacy which obviates the possibility of ethical judgment, and the other providing a leverage which allows ethical criteria. The author suggests a third interpretation, emphasizing the social character of experience, which is more comprehensive than the first two and correlates better with our experience of moral claims.

The word naturalism is used in many different ways in contemporary philosophy. For some it has required that a properly naturalistic account of anything appeal only to what is countenanced by the natural sciences and, for a few, that any object of study be reduced to entities and forces studied by physics and chemistry. Research programs have been developed to “naturalize” numbers, norms, intentional states, and other seemingly recalcitrant concepts by performing the requisite reduction. But a naturalistic account should be (...) concerned with explanation, not reduction. Even when granting a priority to the sciences, social scientific and historical explanations should not be ruled out of court from the outset. .. (shrink)

Turing was probably the first person to advocate the pursuit of robotics as a route to Artificial Intelligence and Wittgenstein the first to argue that, without the appropriate history, no machine could be intelligent. Wittgenstein anticipated much recent theorizing about the mind, including aspects of connectionist theo- ries of mind and the situated cognition approach in AI. Turing and Wittgenstein had a wary respect for each other and there is significant overlap in their work, in both the philosophy of mathematics (...) and the philosophy of AI. Both took (what would now be called) an externalist stance with respect to machine intelligence. But whereas Turing was concerned only with behaviour, Wittgenstein emphasized in addition history and environment. I show that Wittgenstein's externalist analysis of psychological capacities entails that most, even all, future "artificially intelligent" computers and robots will not use language, possess concepts, or reason. The ar- gument tells, not against AI, but only against AI's traditional and romantic goal of building an artificial "res cogitans" - as first embraced by Turing and now ex- emplified in the work of Brooks and others on cognitive robotics. This argument supports the stance of the growing number of AI researchers whose aim is to pro- duce, not thinking and understanding machines, but high-performance "advanced information processing systems.". (shrink)

Geary's is the traditional view of the sexes. Yet each part of his argument – the move from sex differences in spatial ability and social preferences to a sex difference in mathematical ability, the claim that the former are biologically primary, and the sociobiological explanation of these differences – requires considerable further work. The notion of a biologically secondary ability is itself problematic.

Traditional accounts hold that reference consists in a relation between the mind and an object; the relation is effected by a mental act and mediated by internal mental contents (internal representations). Contemporary theories as diverse as Fodor’s [Fodor, J.A., 1987. Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] language of thought hypothesis, Dretske’s [Dretske, F., 1988. Explaining Behaviour: Reasons in a World of Causes. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] informational semantics and Millikan’s [Millikan, R.G., 1984. (...) Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories: New Foundations for Realism. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] teleosemantics share this act– content–object picture (which was also held by several early modern philosophers, in particular Locke). The core of the traditional view is the thesis that reference and intentionality are relational (‘thesis RR’). Although deeply problematic, RR is entrenched also in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science and Artificial Intelligence. Using for the most part arguments employed by Wittgenstein, we mount a case against RR and advance a deflationary account of reference and intentionality according to which neither is relational. (shrink)

The imitation game, the recent biopic about Alan Turing's efforts to decipher Nazi naval codes, was showered with award nominations. It even won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. One thing it won't win any awards for, though, is its portrayal of the "imitation game" itself-Turing's proposed test of machine thinking, which hinges on whether a computer can convincingly imitate a person. The Turing test, as it is now called, doesn't really feature in the file. (Given that the (...) movie gets so much of the history wrong, perhaps that's a good thing). (shrink)

This is a detective story. The starting-point is a philosophical discussion in 1949, where Alan Turing mentioned a machine whose program, he said, would in practice be “impossible to find.” Turing used his unbreakable machine example to defeat an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence. Yet he gave few clues as to how the program worked. What was its structure such that it could defy analysis for (he said) “a thousand years”? Our suggestion is that the program simulated a (...) type of cipher device, and was perhaps connected to Turing’s postwar work for GCHQ (the UK equivalent of the NSA). We also investigate the machine’s implications for current brain simulation projects. (shrink)

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks 'unorganised machines'. By the application of what he described as 'appropriate interference, mimicking education' an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of 'neurons' is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the (...) network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948. (shrink)

Turing’s analysis of computability has recently been challenged; it is claimed that it is circular to analyse the intuitive concept of numerical computability in terms of the Turing machine. This claim threatens the view, canonical in mathematics and cognitive science, that the concept of a systematic procedure or algorithm is to be explicated by reference to the capacities of Turing machines. We defend Turing’s analysis against the challenge of ‘deviant encodings’.Keywords: Systematic procedure; Turing machine; Church–Turing thesis; Deviant encoding; Acceptable encoding; (...) Turing’s analysis of computability; Turing’s Notational Thesis. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism is a phenomenon that describes the human tendency to see human-like shapes in the environment. It has considerable consequences for people’s choices and beliefs. With the increased presence of robots, it is important to investigate the optimal design for this tech- nology. In this paper we discuss the potential benefits and challenges of building anthropomorphic robots, from both a philosophical perspective and from the viewpoint of empir- ical research in the fields of human–robot interaction and social psychology. We believe (...) that this broad investigation of anthropomorphism will not only help us to understand the phenomenon better, but can also indicate solutions for facil- itating the integration of human-like machines in the real world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS Easter in Ordinary: Reflections on Human Experience and the Knowledge of God. By NICHOLAS LASH. Oharlottesville, Virginia: Uni· versity Press of Virginia, 1988. Pp. 313. $29.95 (hardbound). Nicholas Lash sets out "to construct an argument in favor of one way of construing or interpreting human experience as experience of the mystery of God " (p. 3), and to show that this awareness of God has nothing to (...) do with analyses of " religious experience " or of theism. Recent attention to religious experience, such as that of the philosopher Riohard Swinburne or of the research unit established by the zoologist Alister Hardy at Oxford, relies on a conception of that experience as individualistic rather than communal and as a matter of feeling or sensation in contrast to thought. Lash aMrihutes ·this view of religious experience to the legacy of William James, and contrasts it with that of Frederick Schleiermacher. According to Lash, James identifies the personal wi~h the individual, contrasts thought with feeling, and regards religious experience as private in contrast to public, or " naked " with respect to language, institutions, and other cultural forms. Schleiermacher avoids these errors by focusing not on discrete, datable experiences that one can identify as religious, hut on a moment that pervades all human experience, to the source or object of which the grammar of Christian doctrine gives the name "God." Lash acknowledges that Schleiermacher can he read in support of either of these two different ways of construing religious experience (pp. 112, 129), hut he does not realize that James can also he read in a way that blurs the dichotomy he sets up. Both James and Schleier· maoher provide uncommonly sophisticated accounts of the social character of the self and of the role of language and thought in shaping perception and feeling. In his Ethik, Schleiermacher locates the individual in social and cultural institutions, and elaborates the anthropology that informs his influential lectures on hermeneutics. Three of many notable contributions of James' Principles of Psychology are a chapter on the self that is the source of conceptions of the social self in American sociology and social psychology, a critique of classical empiricism showing that the distinction between sense impressions and ideas is an artifact of an erroneous psychological theory, and a famous chapter on the stream of thought in which he argues human experi505 506 BOOK REVIEWS enoe is not divided into ideas, sensations, and feelings, but is a continuous flow of consciousness. Toward the end of his career, he gave up the concept of consciousness as too closely associated with the mental in contrast to the physical, and spoke instead of the flux of experience. Lash accuses James of Cartesi1an dualism, and attributes to him the view that there is a "little person," a Cartesian self imprisoned in the body. He admi,ts that the Principles contains no such view, hut sug· gests that Jaines becomes mo't'e and more Cartesian as he develops, his radical empiricism. In fact, there is very little in James that could accurately be called Cartesian, and nothing ei,ther in the Principles or in the late Essays in Radical Empiricism that would condone any such picture of an homunculus inside the body. Contrary to Lash's view, the idea of "pure experience" in the latter work does not refer to experience that is independent of language, culture, or institutions, but is rather a reminder that such distinctions as that between objec· tive and subjective, feeling and thought, or perception and fantasy, are not girven in experience, but are products of our interpretations. Despite their social views of the self, both Sohleiermacher and James focus on the consciousness of the individual when they come to ex· amine religious experience or piety. James says.that he will stress the more extreme or devdoped reports of religious experience in order to examine the " ripe fruits " of,tJhe religious life. Both share a Protes· tant bias toward personal piety as the heart of religion, and regard ritual and institutional forms as the communal context for that piety, and an insufficient appreciation for the value of the routine and conventional. But this is not to be identified in either... (shrink)

Ignoring the temporal dimension, an object such as a railway tunnel or a human body is a three-dimensional whole composed of three-dimensional parts. The four-dimensionalist holds that a physical object exhibiting identity across time—Descartes, for example—is a four-dimensional whole composed of 'briefer' four-dimensional objects, its temporal parts. Peter van Inwagen (1990) has argued that four-dimensionalism cannot be sustained, or at best can be sustained only by a counterpart theorist. We argue that different schemes of individuation of temporal parts are available, (...) which undermines van Inwagen's argument. (shrink)

We set the Turing Test in the historical context of the development of machine intelligence, describe the different forms of the test and its rationale, and counter common misinterpretations and objections. Recently published material by Turing casts fresh light on his thinking.

"Damned for God’s Glory": William James and the Scientific Vindication of Protestant Culture, by David A. Hollinger Pragmatism and "an Unseen Order" in Varieties, by Wayne Proudfoot The Fragmentation of Consciousness and The Varieties of Religious Experience: William James’s Contribution to a Theory of Religion, by Ann Taves James’s Varieties and the "New" Constructivism, by Jerome Bruner Some Inconsistencies in James’s Varieties, by Richard Rorty A Pragmatist’s Progress: The Varieties of James’s Strategies for Defending Religion, by Philip Kitcher.

In 1948 Turing claimed that the concept of intelligence is an “emotional concept”. An emotional concept is a response-dependent concept and Turing’s remarks in his 1948 and 1952 papers suggest a response-dependence approach to the concept of intelligence. On this view, whether or not an object is intelligent is determined, as Turing said, “as much by our own state of mind and training as by the properties of the object”. His discussion of free will suggests a similar approach. Turing said, (...) for example, that if a machine’s program “results in its doing something interesting which we had not anticipated I should be inclined to say that the machine had originated something”. This points to a new form of free will compatibilism, which I call response-dependence compatibilism and explore here. (shrink)

This book criticizes the methodology of the recent semantics-pragmatics debate in the theory of language and proposes an alternative. It applies this methodology to argue for a traditional view against a group of “contextualists” and “pragmatists”, including Sperber and Wilson, Bach, Carston, Recanati, Neale, and many others. The author disagrees with these theorists who hold that the meaning of the sentence in an utterance never, or hardly ever, yields its literal truth-conditional content, even after disambiguation and reference fixing; it needs (...) to be pragmatically supplemented in context. The standard methodology of this debate is to consult intuitions. The book argues that theories should be tested against linguistic usage. Theoretical distinctions, however intuitive, need to be scientifically motivated. Also we should not be guided by Grice’s “Modified Occam’s Razor”, Ruhl’s “Monosemantic Bias”, or other such strategies for “meaning denialism”. From this novel perspective, the striking examples of context relativity that motivate contextualists and pragmatists typically exemplify semantic rather than pragmatic properties. In particular, polysemous phenomena should typically be treated as semantic ambiguity. The author argues that conventions have been overlooked, that there’s no extensive “semantic underdetermination” and that the new theoretical framework of “truth-conditional pragmatics” is a mistake. (shrink)