PHIL 4615 1/23/20

Alan Turing – The Imitation Game

 Rules of the game:

o Three players: a man (A), a woman (B), an interrogator (C)
o A, B, and C placed in separate rooms while A and B both try to pass themselves off as A
to C
o If C cannot tell the difference between A and B through the questions asked, it proves
that a woman can think like a man
 Initial question: Can a machine exhibit intelligence?
o Abandoned
 Revised question: Can a machine pass the imitation game?
o Can a machine pass itself off as a human?
 Creation of the Turing machine

Do dogs feel jealousy and envy?

 Through observing the animal’s behavior

 Observe human behavior and identify the behaviors that can be attributed to jealousy
o Generalize human behavior to animals and attribute those behaviors to jealousy or envy
 Likely not a reliable test
o Human behavior cannot be directly compared with animal behavior

Copernicus and Galileo

 The world as we experience it is not how it actually is

Rene Descartes

 Developed techniques that made possible algebraic (analytic) geometry

 Co-framer of the sine law of refraction
 Developed an important empirical account of the rainbow
 Conducted physiological investigations into the visual receptors
o Our visual experience of the world is not to be trusted
 First meditation: What do I really know?
o Introduction to Cartesian skepticism
o Looking for something he really knows
 Second meditation: What am I?
 What is knowledge?
o I can’t say that I know that P if I can’t tell if P might be false
 Must exclude the possibility that P might be false in order to say you know P
o Sensory input is not enough for knowledge
 Argument: How do you know your “experiences” are not dreams?
o What can you point to in your experiences right now to show that you’re not dreaming?

I think, therefore I am. I doubt, therefore I am.

 Cogito, ergo sum
 Cannot doubt that I exist