The Turing Test: the first 50 years

The Turing Test, originally proposed as a simple operational definition of intelligence, has now been with us for exactly half a century. It is safe to say that no other single article in computer science, and few other articles in science in general, have generated so much discussion. The present article chronicles the comments and controversy surrounding Turing's classic article from its publication to the present. The changing perception of the Turing Test over the last 50 years has paralleled the changing attitudes in the scientific community towards artificial intelligence: from the unbridled optimism of 1960s to the current realization of the immense difficulties that still lie ahead. I conclude with the prediction that the Turing Test will remain important, not only as a landmark in the history of the development of intelligent machines, but also with real relevance to future generations of people living in a world in which the cognitive capacities of machines will be vastly greater than they are now.     

Modality,Si! Modal Logic,No!

This article is oriented toward the use of modality in artificial intelligence (AI). An agent must reason about what it or other agents know, believe, want, intend or owe. Referentially opaque modalities are needed and must be formalized correctly. Unfortunately, modal logics seem too limited for many important purposes. This article contains examples of uses of modality for which modal logic seems inadequate.I have no proof that modal logic is inadequate, so I hope modal logicians will take the examples as challenges.Maybe this article will also have philosophical and mathematical logical interest.     

Meaning Relations,Syntax, and Understanding

Axiomathes - This paper revisits the conception of intelligence and understanding as embodied in the Turing Test. It argues that a simple system of meaning relations drawn from words/lexical items...     

Irrational desires

Conclusion I believe that the attempts discussed above fail to show that logically satisfiable basic desires can be rationally impotent. Obviously, this does not entail that they cannot be. Nevertheless, I think it is reasonable to accept a Neo-Humean view. Such acceptence need not be based on burden of proof arguments, about which there is well-grounded skepticism. I prefer instead to base it on a burden of introduction argument; because of the initial plausibility of the Neo-Humean view, critics carry the burden of introducing theories that entail that basic desires can be non-instrumentally irrational (in the relevant sense). Once such theories are introduced, the philosophical court can rule without imposing a burden of proof. I have tried to establish that three recently introduced theories in fact give us no grounds for rejecting Neo-Humeanism.     

Giving the sceptic a good name

The word ‘sceptic’ usually refers to a theoretical figure whose philosophical importance lies exclusively in his challenge to any attempt to justify the belief in the possibility of knowledge. But the label was once applied to living persons ‐ the so‐called Pyrrhonists ‐ whose scepticism encompassed a way of life. Following Sextus Empiricus's portrayal of the Pyrrhonists, Arne Naess has provided comprehensive arguments both in rebuttal of the frequent claims either that scepticism is logically inconsistent or that at least it is impossible to put into practice, and in support of scepticism as a fruitful philosophical attitude. The present essay attempts a critical consolidation of Naess's case for scepticism by drawing more explicitly than he does on his work in empirical semantics. The notion of degrees of preciseness is used to outline a philosophically interesting rationale for the Pyrrhonist's persistent abstention from any act or action that commits him to the truth of a proposition, and also to indicate why possible, or even inevitable lapses on the Pyrrhonist's part need not seriously prejudice either his status as a sceptic or the philosophical value of his sceptical ideal.     

A Republican Housewife: Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland on Women's Political Role

In this paper I look at the philosophical (and sometimes personal) struggles of one eighteenth‐century woman writer to reconcile a desire and obvious capacity to participate in the creation of republican ideals and their applications on the one hand, and on the other a deeply held belief that women's role in a republic is confined to the domestic realm. I argue that Marie‐Jeanne Phlipon Roland's philosophical writings—three unpublished essays, published and unpublished letters, as well as parts of her memoirs—suggest that even though she adopted a Rousseau‐style rural republicanism that relies on complementarity of men and women's virtues, she somehow succeeds in proposing a less sexist picture of the republican family, one that makes it possible for men and women to take an equal part in family business and politics.     

工作记忆训练提升幼儿流体智力表现

目前已有许多研究证据表明, 工作记忆训练能提高成人、儿童的流体智力成绩, 然而这种训练是否能够提高幼儿的流体智力表现, 更为重要的是, 如果训练确有成效, 那么这种训练效果能否长期保持？为此, 本研究选择了幼儿园4~5岁幼儿进行工作记忆训练任务, 考察工作记忆训练对流体智力的提升及保持效应。实验中设立3个组：实验组、控制1组和控制2组。实验组采用单个空间n-back的工作记忆游戏程序进行训练, 控制1组采用“水果忍者”的游戏程序进行训练, 两组进行游戏训练的时间均为14天, 每天15 min; 控制2组不进行任何训练。结果发现, 训练后实验组幼儿被试的流体智力成绩明显优于两个控制组, 在6个月后再进行测试, 这种优势仍然保持。本研究结果表明, n-back工作记忆训练可以提高幼儿的流体智力成绩, 并且这种训练效果具有持续的稳定性。     

On Categories and A Posteriori Necessity: A Phenomenological Echo

This article argues for two related theses. First, it defends a general thesis: any kind of necessity, including metaphysical necessity, can only be known a priori. Second, however, it also argues that the sort of a priori involved in modal metaphysical knowledge is not related to imagination or any sort of so‐called epistemic possibility. Imagination is neither a proof of possibility nor a limit to necessity. Rather, modal metaphysical knowledge is built on intuition of philosophical categories and the structures they form.     

HEIDEGGER AND THE APPROPRIATION OF METAPHYSICS

Heidegger's deconstruction of the history of Western metaphysics has been a major influence behind poststructural critiques of modernity as well as more apologetic attempts to maintain a dialogue with historical sources, such as Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. This bifurcation has intensified the ambiguity of Heidegger's project: was it an attempt to relinquish philosophical ties to the past or a call for a fundamental reinterpretation of them? In this article I argue the latter, focusing my analysis on Heidegger's notions of appropriation and historicity. On the one hand, appropriation is the hermeneutical event by which ontology is reinfused into a reading of historical sources. On the other hand, historicity is the self‐reflexive historical involvement by which we become aware of what contemporary, philosophical conditions necessitate this reengagement. In the end, Heidegger's critique of metaphysics arises from this self‐reflexivity. It deconstructs the prevailing misunderstandings of philosophical sources in order to allow for reinterpretation at a revivified ontological level constantly in view of the question of being.     

Robots in casinos: Distributed control and the problem of efficient action selection

In this paper we characterise a tension between two views about how an agent could achieve efficient action selection. On one hand, it is common in some of the cognitive and behavioural sciences to maintain that efficient action selection requires that the value of all actions or options available to an agent are represented on a unidimensional scale of values, in other words that action selection make use of a “common currency”. On the other hand, early work in situated, embodied robotics and distributed control associated with Rodney Brooks maintained that “intelligence” could be achieved without the instantiation of any representations at all, and without centralised control systems. This line of thinking has exerted significant influence in situated and enactivist approaches to human cognition. If what situated roboticists count as “intelligence” includes capacity for efficient action selection, then their claim that intelligence can be achieved without representations is in tension with the views of those who argue that efficient action selection requires that a common currency be represented. We argue here that the apparent tension is genuine, develop an analysis of the tension itself, and offer a preliminary overview of the considerations relevant to navigating it.     

Are multilayer feedforward networks effectively Turing Machines?

Summary Can connectionist networks implement any symbolic computation? This would be the case if networks have effective Turing machine power. It has been claimed that a recent mathematical result of Hornik, Stinchcombe, and White on the generative power of multilayer feedforward networks has that implication. The present paper considers whether this claim is correct. It is shown that finite approximation measures, as used in Hornik et al.'s proof, are not adequate for capturing the infinite recursiveness of recursive functions. The result is therefore irrelevant to the issue at hand.     

The Philosophical Personality

The authors adopt a critico‐sociological methodology to investigate the current state of the philosophical profession. According to them, the question concerning the status of philosophy (“What is philosophy?”) cannot be answered from within the precinct of philosophical reason alone, since philosophy—understood primarily as a profession—is marked by a constitutive type of self‐ignorance that prevents it from reflecting upon its own sociological conditions of actuality. This ignorance, which is both cause and effect of the organization and investment of philosophical desire, causes philosophers to lose themselves in an ideological myth (“the philosopher as idea(l)”) according to which philosophers are unaffected by the material conditions in which they exist. This myth prevents philosophers from noticing the extent to which their activity is influenced by extra‐philosophical determinants that shape, empirically, who becomes a professional philosopher (“the philosopher as imago”) and who doesn't. This article explores the relationship between philosophy's “idea(l)” and its “imago” as a way of shedding light on some of the mechanisms that make philosophy inhospitable for so many women, people of color, and economic minorities.     

Personality and Intelligence: Gender,the Big Five,Self‐Estimated and Psychometric Intelligence

This paper reports on two studies that investigated the relationship between the Big Five personality traits, self‐estimates of intelligence (SEI), and scores on two psychometrically validated intelligence tests. In study 1 a total of 100 participants completed the NEO‐PI‐R, the Wonderlic Personnel Test and the Baddeley Reasoning Test, and estimated their own intelligence on a normal distribution curve. Multiple regression showed that psychometric intelligence was predicted by Conscientiousness and SEI, while SEI was predicted by gender, Neuroticism (notably anxiety) and Agreeableness (notably modesty). Personality was a better predictor of SEI than of psychometric intelligence itself. Study 2 attempted to explore the relationship between SEI and psychometric intelligence. A total of 130 participants completed the NEO‐PI‐R, the Baddeley Reasoning Test, and the S & M Spatial intelligence test. In addition, SEI and participants conceptions of intelligence were also examined. In combination with gender and previous IQ test experience, these variables were found to predict about 11% of the variance in SEI. SEI was the only significant predictor of psychometrically measured intelligence. Inconsistencies between results of the two studies, theoretical and applied implications, and limitations of this work are discussed.     

Olympia and Other O-Machines

Against Maudlin, I argue that machines which merely reproduce a pre-programmed series of changes ought to be classed with Turing’s O-Machines even if they would counterfactually show Turing Machine-like activity. This can be seen on an interventionist picture of computational architectures, on which basic operations are the primitive loci for interventions. While constructions like Maudlin’s Olympia still compute, then, claims about them do not threaten philosophical arguments that depend on Turing Machine architectures and their computational equivalents.     

Quine’s Substitutional Definition of Logical Truth and the Philosophical Significance of the Löwenheim-Hilbert-Bernays Theorem

The Löwenheim-Hilbert-Bernays theorem states that, for an arithmetical first-order language L, if S is a satisfiable schema, then substitution of open sentences of L for the predicate letters of S results in true sentences of L. For two reasons, this theorem is relevant to issues relative to Quine’s substitutional definition of logical truth. First, it makes it possible for Quine to reply to widespread objections raised against his account (the lexicon-dependence problem and the cardinality-dependence problem). These objections purport to show that Quine’s account overgenerates: it would count as logically true sentences which intuitively or model-theoretically are not so. Second, since this theorem is a crucial premise in Quine’s proof of the equivalence between his substitutional account and the model-theoretic one, it enables him to show that, from a metamathematical point of view, there is no need to favour the model-theoretic account over one in terms of substitutions. The purpose of that essay is thus to explore the philosophical bearings of the Löwenheim-Hilbert-Bernays theorem on Quine’s definition of logical truth. This neglected aspect of Quine’s argumentation in favour of a substitutional definition is shown to be part of a struggle against the model-theoretic prejudice in logic. Such an exploration leads to reassess Quine’s peculiar position in the history of logic.     

The Agent‐Relative Probability Threshold of Hope

Nearly all contributors to the philosophical analysis of hope agree that if an agent hopes that p, she both desires that p and assigns to p a probability which is greater than zero, but less than one. According to the widely‐endorsed Standard Account, these two conditions are also (jointly) sufficient for ‘hoping that’. Ariel Meirav has recently argued, however, that the Standard Account fails to distinguish hoping for a prospect from despairing of it – due to cases where two agents equally desire an outcome and assign to it the same probability, yet one hopes for the outcome while the other despairs of it. I argue, against Meirav, that these putative counterexamples depend crucially on the assumption – previously unquestioned – that the degree of probability necessary for hope is invariant across individuals. If the probability threshold is instead understood as agent‐relative, the difficulty disappears. Further, I argue that there is strong independent reason for taking the probability threshold of hope to be agent‐relative, based on similarities to the widely‐accepted agent‐relative probability thresholds of industriousness and risk aversion. And I conclude by noting how the agent‐relative modification to the Standard Account is better equipped than is Meirav's positive view to yield intuitive results. ¹      

Discrepancies Between Implicit and Explicit Self‐concepts of Intelligence Predict Performance on Tests of Intelligence

Three studies investigated the correspondence between implicit and explicit self‐concepts of intelligence and how that correspondence is related to performance on different intelligence tests. Configurations of these two self‐concepts were found to be consistently related to performance on intelligence tests in all three studies. For individuals who self‐reported high intelligence (high explicit self‐concept), a negative implicit self‐concept (measured with the Implicit Association Test) led to a decrease in performance on intelligence tests. For participants whose self‐report indicated a low self‐concept of intelligence, positive automatic associations between the self and intelligence had a similar effect. In line with a stress hypothesis, the results indicate that any discrepant configuration of self‐concepts will impair performance. Importantly, the prediction of performance on intelligence tests by the self‐concept of intelligence was shown to be independent of self‐esteem (Study 3). Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Planning abilities and chess: A comparison of chess and non‐chess players on the Tower of London task

Playing chess requires problem‐solving capacities in order to search through the chess problem space in an effective manner. Chess should thus require planning abilities for calculating many moves ahead. Therefore, we asked whether chess players are better problem solvers than non‐chess players in a complex planning task. We compared planning performance between chess (N=25) and non‐chess players (N=25) using a standard psychometric planning task, the Tower of London (ToL) test. We also assessed fluid intelligence (Raven Test), as well as verbal and visuospatial working memory. As expected, chess players showed better planning performance than non‐chess players, an effect most strongly expressed in difficult problems. On the other hand, they showed longer planning and movement execution times, especially for incorrectly solved trials. No differences in fluid intelligence and verbal/visuospatial working memory were found between both groups. These findings indicate that better performance in chess players is associated with disproportionally longer solution times, although it remains to be investigated whether motivational or strategic differences account for this result.     

Wittgenstein and the Aesthetic Robot's Handicap

Ask most any cognitive scientist working today if a digital computational system could develop aesthetic sensibility and you will likely receive the optimistic reply that this remains an open empirical question. However, I attempt to show, while drawing upon the later Wittgenstein, that the correct answer is in fact available. And it is a negative a priori. It would seem, for example, that recent computational successes in textual attribution, most notably those of Donald Foster (famed finder of Ted Kazinski a.k.a. “the Unibomber”) speak favorably of the digital model's capacity to overcome the “aspect blindness” handicap in this domain. I argue however that such results are only achievable when rigid input‐to‐output parameters are given, and that this element is precisely what is absent in standard examples of aesthetic judgment. I thus conclude that while the connectionist model anticipated by Turing may provide the best approach for the AI project, its capacity for meeting its own sufficiency requirements is necessarily crippled by its inability to share in what can be generally referred to as the collective engagements of human solidarity.