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629Rethinking Turing’s Test and the Philosophical ImplicationsMinds and Machines 30 (4): 487-512. 2020.In the 70 years since Alan Turing’s ‘Computing Machinery and Intelligence’ appeared in Mind, there have been two widely-accepted interpretations of the Turing test: the canonical behaviourist interpretation and the rival inductive or epistemic interpretation. These readings are based on Turing’s Mind paper; few seem aware that Turing described two other versions of the imitation game. I have argued that both readings are inconsistent with Turing’s 1948 and 1952 statements about intelligence, and…Read more
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373Turing’s Three Senses of “Emotional”International Journal of Synthetic Emotions 5 (2): 7-20. 2014.Turing used the expression “emotional” in three distinct ways: to state his philosophical theory of the concept of intelligence, to classify arguments for and against the possibility of machine intelligence, and to describe the education of a “child machine”. The remarks on emotion include several of the most important philosophical claims. This paper analyses these remarks and their significance for current research in Artificial Intelligence.
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355Heavenly Computation: Digital Metaphysics and the New TheologyMetaphilosophy 47 (1): 147-153. 2016.
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282Possible Worlds Semantics and FictionJournal of Philosophical Logic 35 9-40. 2006.The canonical version of possible worlds semantics for story prefixes is due to David Lewis. This paper reassesses Lewis's theory and draws attention to some novel problems for his account
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195Temporal parts and their individuationAnalysis 61 (4): 289-292. 2002.Ignoring the temporal dimension, an object such as a railway tunnel or a human body is a three-dimensional whole composed of three-dimensional parts. The four-dimensionalist holds that a physical object exhibiting identity across time—Descartes, for example—is a four-dimensional whole composed of 'briefer' four-dimensional objects, its temporal parts. Peter van Inwagen (1990) has argued that four-dimensionalism cannot be sustained, or at best can be sustained only by a counterpart theorist. We …Read more
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192Can a Robot Smile? Wittgenstein on Facial ExpressionIn T. P. Racine & K. L. Slaney (eds.), A Wittgensteinian Perspective on the Use of Conceptual Analysis in Psychology, . pp. 172-194. 2013.Recent work in social robotics, which is aimed both at creating an artificial intelligence and providing a test-bed for psychological theories of human social development, involves building robots that can learn from ‘face-to-face’ interaction with human beings — as human infants do. The building-blocks of this interaction include the robot’s ‘expressive’ behaviours, for example, facial-expression and head-and-neck gesture. There is here an ideal opportunity to apply Wittgensteinian conceptual a…Read more
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111The implications of an externalist theory of rule-following behavior for robot cognitionMinds and Machines 14 (3): 283-308. 2004.Given (1) Wittgensteins externalist analysis of the distinction between following a rule and behaving in accordance with a rule, (2) prima facie connections between rule-following and psychological capacities, and (3) pragmatic issues about training, it follows that most, even all, future artificially intelligent computers and robots will not use language, possess concepts, or reason. This argument suggests that AIs traditional aim of building machines with minds, exemplified in current work o…Read more
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99Turing, Wittgenstein and the science of the mindAustralasian Journal of Philosophy 72 497-519. 1994.This Article does not have an abstract
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85On Alan Turing's Anticipation of ConnectionismSynthese 108 361-367. 1996.It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks 'unorganised machines'. By the application of what he described as 'appropriate interference, mimicking education' an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of 'neurons' is sufficient. Turing pro…Read more
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84Deviant encodings and Turing’s analysis of computabilityStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 41 (3): 247-252. 2010.Turing’s analysis of computability has recently been challenged; it is claimed that it is circular to analyse the intuitive concept of numerical computability in terms of the Turing machine. This claim threatens the view, canonical in mathematics and cognitive science, that the concept of a systematic procedure or algorithm is to be explicated by reference to the capacities of Turing machines. We defend Turing’s analysis against the challenge of ‘deviant encodings’.Keywords: Systematic procedure…Read more
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84What Turing did after he invented the universal Turing machineJournal of Logic, Language and Information 9 491-509. 2000.Alan Turing anticipated many areas of current research incomputer and cognitive science. This article outlines his contributionsto Artificial Intelligence, connectionism, hypercomputation, andArtificial Life, and also describes Turing's pioneering role in thedevelopment of electronic stored-program digital computers. It locatesthe origins of Artificial Intelligence in postwar Britain. It examinesthe intellectual connections between the work of Turing and ofWittgenstein in respect of their views …Read more
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56Jakob Hohwy, The Predictive Mind (review)Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (1): 207-208. 2014.
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55On Wittgenstein on Cognitive SciencePhilosophy 72 189-217. 1997.Cognitive science is held, not only by its practitioners, to offer something distinctively new in the philosophy of mind. This novelty is seen as the product of two factors. First, philosophy of mind takes itself to have well and truly jettisoned the ‘old paradigm’, the theory of the mind as embodied soul, easily and completely known through introspection but not amenable to scientific inquiry. This is replaced by the ‘new paradigm’, the theory of mind as neurally-instantiated computational mech…Read more
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31Anthropomorphism and AI: Turingʼs much misunderstood imitation gameArtificial Intelligence 175 (5-6): 950-957. 2011.The widespread tendency, even within AI, to anthropomorphize machines makes it easier to convince us of their intelligence. How can any putative demonstration of intelligence in machines be trusted if the AI researcher readily succumbs to make-believe? This is (what I shall call) the forensic problem of anthropomorphism. I argue that the Turing test provides a solution. This paper illustrates the phenomenon of misplaced anthropomorphism and presents a new perspective on Turingʼs imitation game. …Read more
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24An Analysis of Turing’s Criterion for ‘Thinking’Philosophies 7 (6): 124. 2022.In this paper I argue that Turing proposed a new approach to the concept of thinking, based on his claim that intelligence is an ‘emotional concept’; and that the response-dependence interpretation of Turing’s ‘criterion for “thinking”’ is a better fit with his writings than orthodox interpretations. The aim of this paper is to clarify the response-dependence interpretation, by addressing such questions as: What did Turing mean by the expression ‘emotional’? Is Turing’s criterion subjective? Are…Read more
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22Prosentential theory of truth in Dorothy Grover (1936-2017)Encyclopedia of Concise Concepts by Women Philosophers. 2022.In this entry, we offer a very brief overview of Dorothy Grover's prosentential theory of truth.
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21Sylvan's Bottle and other ProblemsAustralasian Journal of Logic 15 (2): 95-123. 2018.According to Richard Routley, a comprehensive theory of fiction is impossible, since almost anything is in principle imaginable. In my view, Routley is right: for any purported logic of fiction, there will be actual or imaginable fictions that successfully counterexample the logic. Using the example of ‘impossible’ fictions, I test this claim against theories proposed by Routley’s Meinongian contemporaries and also by Routley himself and his 21st century heirs. I argue that the phenomenon of imp…Read more
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19The logic of the sociobiological model Geary-styleBehavioral and Brain Sciences 19 (2): 261-261. 1996.Geary's is the traditional view of the sexes. Yet each part of his argument – the move from sex differences in spatial ability and social preferences to a sex difference in mathematical ability, the claim that the former are biologically primary, and the sociobiological explanation of these differences – requires considerable further work. The notion of a biologically secondary ability is itself problematic.
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2Artificial IntelligenceIn E. Margolis, R. Samuels & S. Stich (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science, . pp. 147-182. 2011.In this article the central philosophical issues concerning human-level artificial intelligence (AI) are presented. AI largely changed direction in the 1980s and 1990s, concentrating on building domain-specific systems and on sub-goals such as self-organization, self-repair, and reliability. Computer scientists aimed to construct intelligence amplifiers for human beings, rather than imitation humans. Turing based his test on a computer-imitates-human game, describing three versions of this game …Read more
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2Wittgenstein's anticipation of the chinese roomIn John M. Preston & John Mark Bishop (eds.), Views Into the Chinese Room: New Essays on Searle and Artificial Intelligence, Oxford University Press. 2002.
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1Child MachinesIn Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Robin Wilson & Mark Sprevak (eds.), The Turing Guide, Oxford University Press. pp. 315-325. 2017.
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1Meaning and Mind: Wittgenstein’s Relevance for the “Does Language Shape Thought?” DebateNew Ideas in Psychology 27 163-183. 2009.This paper explores the relevance of Wittgenstein’s philosophi- cal psychology for the two major contemporary approaches to the relation between language and cognition. As Pinker describes it, on the ‘Standard Social Science Model’ language is ‘an insidious shaper of thought’. According to Pinker’s own widely–shared alternative view, ‘Language is the magnificent faculty that we use to get thoughts from one head to another’. I investigate Wittgenstein’s powerful challenges to the hypothe- sis tha…Read more
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1Connectionism: Computing with NeuronsIn Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Robin Wilson & Mark Sprevak (eds.), The Turing Guide, Oxford University Press. pp. 309-314. 2017.
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1Turing’s Test: A Philosophical and Historical GuideIn R. Epstein, G. Roberts & G. Beber (eds.), Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues, Springer. pp. 119-138. 2008.We set the Turing Test in the historical context of the development of machine intelligence, describe the different forms of the test and its rationale, and counter common misinterpretations and objections. Recently published material by Turing casts fresh light on his thinking.