Descartes’ influence on Turing

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Highlights

► I first show that the Turing test is not an expression of behaviourism. ► To demonstrate this, I outline Turing’s necessary condition for intelligence. ► Then I show that Alan Turing was likely aware of Descartes’s ‘language test’. ► Last I argue that Descartes’s and Turing’s tests have similar epistemic purposes.

Introduction

Alan Turing, in his 1950 Mind paper ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence,’ introduces what is now called ‘The Turing test’ (Turing, 1950). Turing’s paper has inspired countless papers in support of, and critical of, the claim that computers can think. The received view of Turing’s philosophy of mind is that he was a behaviorist. This view has persisted despite numerous critical evaluations of his work that argue to the contrary.

In this paper I begin by briefly comparing reasons that have been offered for the claim that Turing was not a behaviorist, despite his apparent commitment to the claim that thinking requires nothing more than displaying verbal behavior indistinguishable from a person. The strongest reason for understanding Turing this way, I argue, is his commitment to a non-behavioral necessary condition for intelligence. Then I show that

  • 1.

    Turing was aware of Descartes’ ‘language test’, and likely had it in mind when writing his 1950 Mind paper that introduces the Turing test; and,

  • 2.

    Turing intended the imitation game to play an epistemological role that is similar to the role that Descartes intended the language test to play.

If Turing wasn’t offering a behaviorist view, unlike many of his contemporaries, what non-behaviorist influences (if any) planted the seed in Turing’s mind of what may seem, at first glance, a behaviorist understanding of thinking? I answer this question by a close reading of some of Turing’s personal papers from the years immediately preceding the publication of the paper introducing the Turing test. With historical influences in place, I argue that, far from being coincidentally similar, Descartes’ language test and Turing’s imitation game are both intended as nearly certain tests for thinking, and as tests for internal, particular causes of thinking (although Turing and Descartes disagree on what the necessary internal causes of thinking are).

Section snippets

Definitions

In his 1950 article, Turing explains a party game he calls the ‘imitation game.’ In it, an interrogator (C) judge must determine, solely through written queries and responses, which of two other participants is a man (A) and which is a woman (B). The judge is aware that one of the participants is a man and one is a woman. Turing proposes to replace the question ‘can machines think’ with the following:

What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game? Will the interrogator decide

Conclusion

So, I believe there is ample evidence that Turing at least conceived of his own test as fulfilling just the epistemic purpose that Descartes’ fulfilled for him. I have argued for this by presenting extant interpretations of Descartes, analysis of Turing’s texts, and philosophical analysis of the views of each.

Turing is in a dialogue spanning centuries in which he is presented with the view that, due to some hidden property, humans are able to engage in natural language conversations, but

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Dalhousie Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Research Development Fund grant, from funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful to helpful feedback from an anonymous referee, participants at the 2008 meeting of the Canadian Society for the History of Philosophy and Science, and participants of the Dalhousie Philosophy Colloquium Series. I am also grateful to Joy Abramson, Duncan MacIntosh, Tom Vinci, Sara Parks

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