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Turing’s Wager?

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Copeland B. J., Proudfoot D.

Filozofia i Nauka

2023

vol. 11

23-36

We examine Turing’s intriguing claim, made in the philosophy journal Mind, that he had created a short computer program of such a nature that it would be impossible “to discover by observation sufficient about it to predict its future behaviour, and this within a reasonable time, say a thousand years” (Turing, 1950, p. 457). A program like this would naturally have cryptographic applications, and we explore how the program would most likely have functioned. Importantly, a myth has recently grown up around this program of Turing’s, namely that it can be used as the basis of an argument-and was so used by Turing-to support the conclusion that it is impossible to infer a detailed mathematical description of the human brain within a practicable timescale. This alleged argument of Turing’s has been dubbed “Turing’s Wager” (Thwaites, Soltan, Wieser, Nimmo-Smith, 2017, p. 3) We demonstrate that this argument-in fact nowhere to be found in Turing’s work-is worthless, since it commits a glaring logical fallacy. “Turing’s Wager” gives no grounds for pessimism about the prospects for understanding and simulating the human brain.

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1 Filozofia i Nauka

1 Copeland B. J.

1 Proudfoot D.

1 2023

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Turing’s Wager?