Abstract

The questions raised by A. M. Turing in his paper on thought and machines are discussed. Human thought is considered in turn as a concept of normal language usage, as a basic concept of psychology, and as the basis of intellectual activity. It is concluded that neither of these notions of thought identifies something specific that a human being can or cannot do. The imitation game proposed by Turing for deciding whether a machine can think is found to result from an arbitrary impoverishment of the channel of communication between the interrogator and the item under investigation. Turing's notions of thinking are shown to lead to logical difficulties. An alternative view of consciousness, placing it beyond the reach of any finite test, is finally discussed.