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 Compiled by David Chalmers (Editor) & David Bourget (Assistant Editor), Australian National University. Submit an entry.
 
     
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Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence :: Can Machines Think?

See also:

6.1a The Turing Test

See also: 4.3a. Logical Behaviorism, 5.3. The Problem of Other Minds, 6.1b. Godelian arguments, 6.1c. The Chinese Room, 6.1d. Machine Consciousness, 6.1e. Machine Mentality, Misc.

Akman, Varol & Blackburn, Patrick (2000). Editorial: Alan Turing and artificial intelligence. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 9 (4):391-395.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Department of Computer Engineering, Bilkent University, 06533 Ankara, Turkey E-mail: akman@cs.bilkent.edu.tr; http://www.cs.bilkent.edu.tr/∼akman..
Alper, G. (1990). A psychoanalyst takes the Turing test. Psychoanalytic Review 77:59-68.   (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)
Barresi, John (1987). Prospects for the cyberiad: Certain limits on human self-knowledge in the cybernetic age. Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 17 (March):19-46.   (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)
Beenfeldt, Christian (2006). The Turing test: An examination of its nature and its mentalistic ontology. Danish Yearbook of Philosophy 40:109-144.   (Google | Edit)
Ben-Yami, Hanoch (2005). Behaviorism and psychologism: Why Block's argument against behaviorism is unsound. Philosophical Psychology 18 (2):179-186.   (Cited by 1 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Ned Block ((1981). Psychologism and behaviorism. Philosophical Review, 90, 5-43.) argued that a behaviorist conception of intelligence is mistaken, and that the nature of an agent's internal processes is relevant for determining whether the agent has intelligence. He did that by describing a machine which lacks intelligence, yet can answer questions put to it as an intelligent person would. The nature of his machine's internal processes, he concluded, is relevant for determining that it lacks intelligence. I argue against Block that it is not the nature of its processes but of its linguistic behavior which is responsible for his machine's lack of intelligence. As I show, not only has Block failed to establish that the nature of internal processes is conceptually relevant for psychology, in fact his machine example actually supports some version of behaviorism. As Wittgenstein has maintained, as far as psychology is concerned, there may be chaos inside
Block, Ned (1981). Psychologism and behaviorism. Philosophical Review 90 (1):5-43.   (Cited by 88 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Let psychologism be the doctrine that whether behavior is intelligent behavior depends on the character of the internal information processing that produces it. More specifically, I mean psychologism to involve the doctrine that two systems could have actual and potential behavior _typical_ of familiar intelligent beings, that the two systems could be exactly alike in their actual and potential behavior, and in their behavioral dispositions and capacities and counterfactual behavioral properties (i.e., what behaviors, behavioral dispositions, and behavioral capacities they would have exhibited had their stimuli differed)--the two systems could be alike in all these ways, yet there could be a difference in the information processing that mediates their stimuli and responses that determines that one is not at all intelligent while the other is fully intelligent
Bringsjord, Selmer (2000). Animals, zombanimals, and the total Turing test: The essence of artificial intelligence. Journal of Logic Language and Information 9 (4):397-418.   (Cited by 32 | Google | More links | Edit)
Bringsjord, Selmer; Bello, P. & Ferrucci, David A. (2001). Creativity, the Turing test, and the (better) Lovelace test. Minds and Machines 11 (1):3-27.   (Cited by 11 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   The Turing Test (TT) is claimed by many to be a way to test for the presence, in computers, of such ``deep'' phenomena as thought and consciousness. Unfortunately, attempts to build computational systems able to pass TT (or at least restricted versions of this test) have devolved into shallow symbol manipulation designed to, by hook or by crook, trick. The human creators of such systems know all too well that they have merely tried to fool those people who interact with their systems into believing that these systems really have minds. And the problem is fundamental: the structure of the TT is such as to cultivate tricksters. A better test is one that insists on a certain restrictive epistemic relation between an artificial agent (or system) A, its output o, and the human architect H of A – a relation which, roughly speaking, obtains when H cannot account for how A produced o. We call this test the ``Lovelace Test'' in honor of Lady Lovelace, who believed that only when computers originate things should they be believed to have minds
Clark, Thomas W. (1992). The Turing test as a novel form of hermeneutics. International Studies in Philosophy 24 (1):17-31.   (Cited by 6 | Google | Edit)
Clifton, Andrew (ms). Blind man's bluff and the Turing test.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: It seems plausible that under the conditions of the Turing test, congenitally blind people could nevertheless, with sufficient preparation, successfully represent themselves to remotely located interrogators as sighted. Having never experienced normal visual sensations, the successful blind player can prevail in this test only by playing a 'lying game'—imitating the phenomenological claims of sighted people, in the absence of the qualitative visual experiences to which such statements purportedly refer. This suggests that a computer or robot might pass the Turing test in the same way, in the absence not only of visual experience, but qualitative consciousness in general. Hence, the standard Turing test does not provide a valid criterion for the presence of consciousness. A 'sensorimetric' version of the Turing test fares no better, for the apparent correlations we observe between cognitive functions and qualitative conscious experiences seems to be contingent, not necessary. We must therefore define consciousness not in terms of its causes and effects, but rather, in terms of the distinctive properties of its content, such as its possession of qualitative character and apparent intrinsic value—the property which confers upon consciousness its moral significance. As a means of determining whether or nor a machine is conscious, in this sense, an alternative to the standard Turing test is proposed
Copeland, B. Jack (2000). The Turing test. Minds and Machines 10 (4):519-539.   (Cited by 7 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   Turing''s test has been much misunderstood. Recently unpublished material by Turing casts fresh light on his thinking and dispels a number of philosophical myths concerning the Turing test. Properly understood, the Turing test withstands objections that are popularly believed to be fatal
Crawford, C. (1994). Notes on the Turing test. Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 37 (June):13-15.   (Google | Edit)
Crockett, L. (1994). The Turing Test and the Frame Problem: AI's Mistaken Understanding of Intelligence. Ablex.   (Cited by 19 | Google | More links | Edit)
Davidson, Donald (1990). Turing's test. In K. Said (ed.), Modelling the Mind. Oxford University Press.   (Google | Edit)
Dennett, Daniel C. (1984). Can machines think? In M. G. Shafto (ed.), How We Know. Harper & Row.   (Cited by 24 | Annotation | Google | Edit)
Drozdek, Adam (2001). Descartes' Turing test. Epistemologia 24 (1):5-29.   (Google | Edit)
Edmonds, Bruce (2000). The constructability of artificial intelligence (as defined by the Turing test). Journal of Logic Language and Information 9 (4):419-424.   (Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: The Turing Test (TT), as originally specified, centres on theability to perform a social role. The TT can be seen as a test of anability to enter into normal human social dynamics. In this light itseems unlikely that such an entity can be wholly designed in anoff-line mode; rather a considerable period of training insitu would be required. The argument that since we can pass the TT,and our cognitive processes might be implemented as a Turing Machine(TM), that consequently a TM that could pass the TT could be built, isattacked on the grounds that not all TMs are constructible in a plannedway. This observation points towards the importance of developmentalprocesses that use random elements (e.g., evolution), but in these casesit becomes problematic to call the result artificial. This hasimplications for the means by which intelligent agents could bedeveloped
Erion, Gerald J. (2001). The cartesian test for automatism. Minds and Machines 11 (1):29-39.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   In Part V of his Discourse on the Method, Descartes introduces a test for distinguishing people from machines that is similar to the one proposed much later by Alan Turing. The Cartesian test combines two distinct elements that Keith Gunderson has labeled the language test and the action test. Though traditional interpretation holds that the action test attempts to determine whether an agent is acting upon principles, I argue that the action test is best understood as a test of common sense. I also maintain that this interpretation yields a stronger test than Turing's, and that contemporary artificial intelligence should consider using it as a guide for future research
Floridi, Luciano (2005). Consciousness, agents and the knowledge game. Minds and Machines 15 (3):415-444.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: This paper has three goals. The first is to introduce the “knowledge game”, a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some intriguing philosophical questions. The second is to apply the knowledge game as an informative test to discriminate between conscious (human) and conscious-less agents (zombies and robots), depending on which version of the game they can win. And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to Dretske’s question “how do you know you are not a zombie?”
French, Robert (1996). The inverted Turing test: How a mindless program could pass it. Psycoloquy 7 (39).   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: This commentary attempts to show that the inverted Turing Test (Watt 1996) could be simulated by a standard Turing test and, most importantly, claims that a very simple program with no intelligence whatsoever could be written that would pass the inverted Turing test. For this reason, the inverted Turing test in its present form must be rejected
French, Robert (2000). The Turing test: The first fifty years. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 4 (3):115-121.   (Cited by 15 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: The Turing Test, originally proposed as a simple operational definition of intelligence, has now been with us for exactly half a century. It is safe to say that no other single article in computer science, and few other articles in science in general, have generated so much discussion. The present article chronicles the comments and controversy surrounding Turing’s classic article from its publication to the present. The changing perception of the Turing Test over the last fifty years has paralleled the changing attitudes in the scientific community towards artificial intelligence: from the unbridled optimism of 1960’s to the current realization of the immense difficulties that still lie ahead. I conclude with the prediction that the Turing Test will remain important, not only as a landmark in the history of the development of intelligent machines, but also with real relevance to future generations of people living in a world in which the cognitive capacities of machines will be vastly greater than they are now
French, Robert M. (2000). Peeking behind the screen: The unsuspected power of the standard Turing test. Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 12 (3):331-340.   (Cited by 10 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: No computer that had not experienced the world as we humans had could pass a rigorously administered standard Turing Test. We show that the use of “subcognitive” questions allows the standard Turing Test to indirectly probe the human subcognitive associative concept network built up over a lifetime of experience with the world. Not only can this probing reveal differences in cognitive abilities, but crucially, even differences in _physical aspects_ of the candidates can be detected. Consequently, it is unnecessary to propose even harder versions of the Test in which all physical and behavioral aspects of the two candidates had to be indistinguishable before allowing the machine to pass the Test. Any machine that passed the “simpler” symbols- in/symbols-out test as originally proposed by Turing would be intelligent. The problem is that, even in its original form, the Turing Test is already too hard and too anthropocentric for any machine that was not a physical, social, and behavioral carbon copy of ourselves to actually pass it. Consequently, the Turing Test, even in its standard version, is not a reasonable test for general machine intelligence. There is no need for an even stronger version of the Test
French, Robert M. (1995). Refocusing the debate on the Turing test: A response. Behavior and Philosophy 23 (1):59-60.   (Cited by 3 | Annotation | Google | Edit)
French, Robert M. (1990). Subcognition and the limits of the Turing test. Mind 99 (393):53-66.   (Cited by 66 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Gunderson, Keith (1964). The imitation game. Mind 73 (April):234-45.   (Cited by 13 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Harnad, Stevan & Dror, Itiel (2006). Distributed cognition: Cognizing, autonomy and the Turing test. Pragmatics and Cognition 14 (2):14.   (Cited by 2 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Some of the papers in this special issue distribute cognition between what is going on inside individual cognizers' heads and their outside worlds; others distribute cognition among different individual cognizers. Turing's criterion for cognition was individual, autonomous input/output capacity. It is not clear that distributed cognition could pass the Turing Test
Harnad, Stevan (1995). Does mind piggyback on robotic and symbolic capacity? In H. Morowitz & J. Singer (eds.), The Mind, the Brain, and Complex Adaptive Systems. Addison Wesley.   (Google | Edit)
Abstract: Cognitive science is a form of "reverse engineering" (as Dennett has dubbed it). We are trying to explain the mind by building (or explaining the functional principles of) systems that have minds. A "Turing" hierarchy of empirical constraints can be applied to this task, from t1, toy models that capture only an arbitrary fragment of our performance capacity, to T2, the standard "pen-pal" Turing Test (total symbolic capacity), to T3, the Total Turing Test (total symbolic plus robotic capacity), to T4 (T3 plus internal [neuromolecular] indistinguishability). All scientific theories are underdetermined by data. What is the right level of empirical constraint for cognitive theory? I will argue that T2 is underconstrained (because of the Symbol Grounding Problem and Searle's Chinese Room Argument) and that T4 is overconstrained (because we don't know what neural data, if any, are relevant). T3 is the level at which we solve the "other minds" problem in everyday life, the one at which evolution operates (the Blind Watchmaker is no mind-reader either) and the one at which symbol systems can be grounded in the robotic capacity to name and manipulate the objects their symbols are about. I will illustrate this with a toy model for an important component of T3 -- categorization -- using neural nets that learn category invariance by "warping" similarity space the way it is warped in human categorical perception: within-category similarities are amplified and between-category similarities are attenuated. This analog "shape" constraint is the grounding inherited by the arbitrarily shaped symbol that names the category and by all the symbol combinations it enters into. No matter how tightly one constrains any such model, however, it will always be more underdetermined than normal scientific and engineering theory. This will remain the ineliminable legacy of the mind/body problem
Harnad, Stevan (1994). Levels of functional equivalence in reverse bioengineering: The Darwinian Turing test for artificial life. Artificial Life 1 (3):93-301.   (Cited by 35 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: Both Artificial Life and Artificial Mind are branches of what Dennett has called "reverse engineering": Ordinary engineering attempts to build systems to meet certain functional specifications, reverse bioengineering attempts to understand how systems that have already been built by the Blind Watchmaker work. Computational modelling (virtual life) can capture the formal principles of life, perhaps predict and explain it completely, but it can no more be alive than a virtual forest fire can be hot. In itself, a computational model is just an ungrounded symbol system; no matter how closely it matches the properties of what is being modelled, it matches them only formally, with the mediation of an interpretation. Synthetic life is not open to this objection, but it is still an open question how close a functional equivalence is needed in order to capture life. Close enough to fool the Blind Watchmaker is probably close enough, but would that require molecular indistinguishability, and if so, do we really need to go that far?
Harnad, Stevan (1991). Other bodies, other minds: A machine incarnation of an old philosophical problem. Minds and Machines 1 (1):43-54.   (Cited by 99 | Annotation | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract:   Any attempt to explain the mind by building machines with minds must confront the other-minds problem: How can we tell whether any body other than our own has a mind when the only way to know is by being the other body? In practice we all use some form of Turing Test: If it can do everything a body with a mind can do such that we can't tell them apart, we have no basis for doubting it has a mind. But what is everything a body with a mind can do? Turing's original pen-pal version of the Turing Test (the TT) only tested linguistic capacity, but Searle has shown that a mindless symbol-manipulator could pass the TT undetected. The Total Turing Test (TTT) calls instead for all of our linguistic and robotic capacities; immune to Searle's argument, it suggests how to ground a symbol manipulating system in the capacity to pick out the objects its symbols refer to. No Turing Test, however, can guarantee that a body has a mind. Worse, nothing in the explanation of its successful performance requires a model to have a mind at all. Minds are hence very different from the unobservables of physics (e.g., superstrings); and Turing Testing, though essential for machine-modeling the mind, can really only yield an explanation of the body
Harnad, Stevan (2004). The Annotation Game: On Turing (1950) on Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence. In Robert Epstein & G. Peters (eds.), The Turing Test Sourcebook: Philosophical and Methodological Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Kluwer.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: This quote/commented critique of Turing's classical paper suggests that Turing meant -- or should have meant -- the robotic version of the Turing Test (and not just the email version). Moreover, any dynamic system (that we design and understand) can be a candidate, not just a computational one. Turing also dismisses the other-minds problem and the mind/body problem too quickly. They are at the heart of both the problem he is addressing and the solution he is proposing
Harnad, Stevan (2006). The annotation game: On Turing (1950) on computing, machinery, and intelligence. In Robert Epstein & Grace Peters (eds.), The Turing Test Sourcebook: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. Kluwer.   (Cited by 5 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: This quote/commented critique of Turing's classical paper suggests that Turing meant -- or should have meant -- the robotic version of the Turing Test (and not just the email version). Moreover, any dynamic system (that we design and understand) can be a candidate, not just a computational one. Turing also dismisses the other-minds problem and the mind/body problem too quickly. They are at the heart of both the problem he is addressing and the solution he is proposing
Harnad, Stevan (1999). Turing on reverse-engineering the mind. Journal of Logic, Language, and Information.   (Cited by 4 | Google | Edit)
Harnad, Stevan (1992). The Turing test is not a trick. SIGART Bulletin 3 (4):9-10.   (Cited by 44 | Google | More links | Edit)
Abstract: It is important to understand that the Turing Test (TT) is not, nor was it intended to be, a trick; how well one can fool someone is not a measure of scientific progress. The TT is an empirical criterion: It sets AI's empirical goal to be to generate human-scale performance capacity. This goal will be met when the candidate's performance is totally indistinguishable from a human's. Until then, the TT simply represents what it is that AI must endeavor eventually to accomplish scientifically