Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T05:23:24.819Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Lucas Against Mechanism II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

David Lewis
David Lewis*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

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