Page "Consciousness" Paragraph 22

One of the most influential contributions to this question was an essay written in 1950 by pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing, titled Computing Machinery and Intelligence.

Turing disavowed any interest in terminology, saying that even " Can machines think?

" is too loaded with spurious connotations to be meaningful ; but he proposed to replace all such questions with a specific operational test, which has become known as the Turing test.

To pass the test a computer must be able to imitate a human well enough to fool interrogators.

In his essay Turing discussed a variety of possible objections, and presented a counterargument to each of them.

The Turing test is commonly cited in discussions of artificial intelligence as a proposed criterion for machine consciousness ; it has provoked a great deal of philosophical debate.

For example, Daniel Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter argue that anything capable of passing the Turing test is necessarily conscious, while David Chalmers argues that a philosophical zombie could pass the test, yet fail to be conscious.