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Lucas Against Mechanism II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Lewis
David Lewis*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

J. R. Lucas serves warning that he stands ready to refute any sufficiently specific accusation that he is a machine. let any mechanist say, to his face, that he is some particular machine M; Lucas will respond by producing forthwith a suitable Gödel sentence ϕM. Having produced ϕM, he will then argue that — given certain credible premises about himself — he could not have done so if the accusation that he was M had been true. let the mechanist try again; Lucas will counter him again in the same way. It is not possible to accuse Lucas truly of being a machine.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , September 1979 , pp. 373 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1979

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References

1 Lucas, J. R. “Minds, Machines and Gödel,” Philosophy 36 (1961), pp. 112-27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Lewis, David “Lucas Against Mechanism,” Philosophy 44 (1969), pp. 231-33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Lucas, J. R. “Satan Stultified: A Rejoinder to Paul Benacerraf,” Monist 52 (1968), pp. 145-46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Lucas, J. R. “Mechanism: A Rejoinder,” Philosophy 45 (1970), pp. 149-51;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Lucas, J. R. The Freedom of the Will (Oxford, 1970), pp. 139-45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar