Abstract
In this paper I present an argument against the feasibility of the Imitation Game as a test for thinking or language understanding. The argument is different from the five objections presented by Turing in his original paper, although it tries to maintain his original intention. I therefore call it “the Sixth Argument” or “the Argument from Context”. I show that – although the argument works against the original version of the imitation game – it may suggest a new version of the Turing Test, still coherent with the idea of thinking and understanding as symbol manipulation. In a new form, the main idea which lies behind the original Imitation Game remains untouched by the criticism of Searle’s Chinese room argument and suggest a possible implementation which avoids some of the shortcomings of the original Turing Test.
Highlights
Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations was published just a few years after his pupil’s famous paper on Mind, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence” (1950)
The central idea of the present paper is connected with a better and more adequate definition of what is meant by “linguistic behavior”. With his conception of “language game” Wittgenstein insisted that no linguistic expression has any meaning unless considered inside a context of actions and goals
Some of Wittgenstein’s ideas may respond to the concerns raised by John Searle’s famous mental experiment of the Chinese room, and offer a possible alternative to a renewed Turing Test to help us better understand what we could be meant by saying that machines could think
Summary
In this paper I present an argument against the feasibility of the Imitation Game as a test for thinking or language understanding. The argument is different from the five objections presented by Turing in his original paper, it tries to maintain his original intention. I call it “the Sixth Argument” or “the Argument from Context”. I show that— the argument works against the original version of the imitation game—it may suggest a new version of the Turing Test, still coherent with the idea of thinking and understanding as symbol manipulation. In a new form, the main idea which lies behind the original Imitation Game remains untouched by the criticism of Searle’s Chinese room argument and suggest a possible implementation which avoids some of the shortcomings of the original Turing Test
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