Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T18:26:53.055Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Can Machines Think?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

W. Mays
W. Mays
Affiliation:
University of Manchester.
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Mr. A. M. Turing was quoted in The Times about a year ago as saying it would be interesting to discover the degree of intellectual activity of which a machine was capable and to what extent it could think for itself. He has now pressed this suggestion further and given the results of his researches in an article called “Computing Machines and Intelligence,” together with a brief account of a “child-machine” which he has attempted to educate (Mind, October 1950). I intend to discuss this article in some detail and examine his claim that “machines can think.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 27 , Issue 101 , April 1952 , pp. 148 - 162
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1952

References

page 149 note 1 New English Dictionary. Oxford, Vol. VI, Part II, M—N, p. 7.Google Scholar

page 149 note 2 Jefierson, G., The Mind of Mechanical Man, The Lister Oration. The British Medical Journal (1949), p. 1, 110.Google Scholar

page 153 note 1 Hartree, D. R., Calculating Instruments and Machines, p. 54 (Cambridge 1950).Google Scholar

page 154 note 1 Mumford, L., Technics and Civilization, p. 424 (Routledge 1934).Google Scholar

page 157 note 1 Ryle, G., The Concept of Mind, p. 82 (Hutchinson's 1949).Google Scholar

page 157 note 2 Mumford, L., Technics and Civilization, p. 11 (Routledge 1934).Google Scholar

page 157 note 3 Mumford, L., Technics and Civilization, p. 32 (Routledge 1934).Google Scholar

page 157 note 4 Craik, K., The Nature of Explanation, p. 86 (Cambridge 1943).Google Scholar

page 157 note 5 Cf. Hadamard, J., The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field (Princeton 1945).Google Scholar

page 158 note 1 Cf. Johnson, W. E., Logic, Part II, Chapter I (Cambridge 1922).Google ScholarPierce's views on logical machines are of interest. C. S. Pierce's Collected Papers, Vol. II, Elements of Logic, 2.56, 2.59 (Harvard 1932).Google Scholar

page 158 note 2 Johnson, W. E., “The Logical Calculus I” Mind, N.S., Vol. I (1892), p. 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 159 note 1 Cf. Whitehead, A. N., Universal Algebra, pp. 3–5 (Cambridge 1898).Google Scholar

page 159 note 2 Cf. Johnson, W. E., Logic, Part II, Chapter III, § 2. “The Logical Cal-culus I,” Mind, N.S., Vol. 1 (1892), pp. 3–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 159 note 3 Hartree, D. R., Calculating Instruments and Machines, p. 70 (Cambridge 1950).Google Scholar

page 160 note 1 Cf. Ayer, A. J., The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, p. 151 (Macmillan 1940).Google Scholar

Kneale, M.: What is the Mind-Body Problem ? Proceedings of The A ristotelian Society (1949–1950), pp. 105–22.Google Scholar

page 160 note 2 Lewis, C. I., “Some Logical Considerations Concerning the Mental,” Feigl, H. and Sellars, W., Readings in Philosophical Analysis, pp. 390–91 (Appleton-Century-Crofts 1949).Google Scholar

page 161 note 1 Cf. Craik, K., The Nature of Explanation, p. 57 (Cambridge 1943).Google Scholar

page 161 note 2 Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 2.1, 2.12, 2.1512 (Kegan Paul 1947).Google Scholar

page 162 note 1 Golla, F. L. (1938) Journal Mental Science 84.9 quoted from E. L. Hutton “The Relationship of Mind and Matter to Personality,” “Perspectives in Neuropsychiatry,” p. 166 (Lewis 1950).Google Scholar

For Lashley's criticisms of the neo-pavlovian association theory of learning, Lashley, K. S. and Wade, M.. “The Pavlovian Theory of Generalization,” Psychological Review, Vol. 53 (1946), pp. 72–86.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed