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A collaborative search for wisdom, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond... "The pluralistic form takes for me a stronger hold on reality than any other philosophy I know of, being essentially a social philosophy, a philosophy of 'co'"-William James
Alan Turing born June 23, 1912, was a mathematician, computer scientist, and philosopher among other things. Although in regards to philosophy, he never considered himself a philosopher he earns that title for the considerable work his efforts contributed to the field. Alan turning was born in southern England and from an early age was exceptionally gifted in areas of mathematics and went on to create the Turing Machine in the late 1930s to help solve problems such as the halting problem. However, some of his most well-known achievements were of the work he did during the Second World War as a code breaker for the British government. His role in breaking the German code and further unraveling the German enigma code has been reported to have shortened the war in Europe by up to two years. The video below helps get an idea of his contributions during the war and to what effect they had on the war effort.
Alan Turing is the best known however for one of his lifetime achievements, the Turing Test. This test he devised was based on an old-fashioned parlor game from the 19th century in which a male and a female would sit on the other side of a curtain and a judge would ask them written questions with written answers. The judge was responsible for discovering which person was the female and which person was the male by discerning that answer through the way they answered the questions. The Turing test was almost identical but instead replaced the female with a computer artificial intelligence and the judge had to figure out which was the computer and which was the person. The test was said by turning to determine if a computer was sentient or not by its ability to avoid detection as an AI by the judge. Turing predicted that when processing memory surpassed 100 Megabytes it would be impossible to separate the AI from a human but as we see today with our phones that have more memory than that, the test only factored in a machine learning ability when it came to patterns and recognition of those patterns.
Alan Turing is widely considered to be the father of artificial intelligence and but I would guess you're asking yourself, what does this have to do with philosophy? Well, as I stated earlier, Turing never considered himself a philosopher but the work he did regarding the Mind-Body Problem and Dualism lead for many of his papers to be used in modern philosophical texts. For example in his paper Computing Machinery and Intelligence, turning gave a modern view on the traditional mind-body problem by comparing it also to its ability to be computable through mathematical means. This mind problem is based on the concept of Dualism or the idea that the mind and body are separate entities working together not a single entity on its own. The Mind-Body problem focuses on discerning the difference between the mind and the body which played into Turing's idea of discerning the difference between a human and an artificially created intelligence.
In this next clip, you see a part of Alan Turing's life that I found extremely interesting, that being his personal life as a homosexual man.
Alan Turing discovered himself as homosexual very early on in his childhood and he would have many male lovers throughout his school years. He even became engaged to a woman but it didn't last, although they both stayed on very good terms with each other. However, this life he lived was not acceptable at the time in England and as such he was ostracized by the country he saved. After helping break the Enigma codes in WWII, Turing was arrested on the acts of homosexuality with young adult men in the 1950s and was given two options, either face prison or submit to chemical castration through estrogen injections. Turing agreed to the castration and not many years after was found to have committed suicide by poisoning himself with cyanide. Turing's life was full of discrimination for the way he loved and who he did and he would not be apologized to by the British government until 2013.
In conclusion, Alan Turing never considered himself a philosopher but the work he did with artificial intelligence help to further the debate over the mind and body and also created a new understanding of consciousness. He also helped to bring about a swift end to World War 2 and is held as a bastion for the LGBTQ community. Alana Turing not only helped gay rights, computer technology, and philosophy, he left a lasting legacy that is still remembered to this day.
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It seems obvious, now, that a computer CAN "talk like a human"-Alexa does it all the time, even though she admits that "Hmm, I don't know that" more frequently (and honestly) than most humans I know. The verdict is still out, I think, as to whether they'll ever think like us. They already "think" faster and more reliably, but is it really what WE call thinking? Is there an egotistic and self-referential center to that digital processing activity? And if not, is there anything to preclude its coming about eventually? If there is, I don't think Searle's th0ught experiment and others like it have succeeded in showing that.
It seems obvious, now, that a computer CAN "talk like a human"-Alexa does it all the time, even though she admits that "Hmm, I don't know that" more frequently (and honestly) than most humans I know. The verdict is still out, I think, as to whether they'll ever think like us. They already "think" faster and more reliably, but is it really what WE call thinking? Is there an egotistic and self-referential center to that digital processing activity? And if not, is there anything to preclude its coming about eventually? If there is, I don't think Searle's th0ught experiment and others like it have succeeded in showing that.
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