Knowledge Tree
Alan Turing
Facts (17)
Sources
Life, Intelligence, and Consciousness: A Functional Perspective longnow.org Aug 27, 2025 12 facts
claimDavid Deutsch and GOFAI advocates both remain committed to Alan Turing’s functional and computational view of the mind.
claimAlan Turing's proof regarding the halting problem provided a negative answer to the Entscheidungsproblem.
claimIn his 1936 paper, Alan Turing proved that a program capable of solving the halting problem for all possible input programs—while being guaranteed to halt itself—is a logical impossibility.
claimAlan Turing developed mathematical models describing how organisms use chemical signals to organize their body plans, which addressed the problem of morphogenesis.
claimBiological functions, such as the kidney's role in filtering urea, are computable functions in the mathematical sense defined by Alan Turing, which implies that these functions are multiply realizable.
quoteAlan Turing stated: "It is possible to invent a single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence. If this machine U is supplied with a tape on the beginning of which is written the S. D. of some computing machine M, then U will compute the same sequence as M."
claimAlan Turing invented the general-purpose computer, or 'Universal Turing Machine,' as a side effect of resolving the Entscheidungsproblem, which asked if there is a mechanical procedure that can determine the truth or falsehood of any mathematical statement.
claimAlan Turing was a founding figure of both computer science and artificial intelligence.
accountAlan Turing imagined a machine capable of reading, writing, and erasing symbols on an infinitely long tape based on a finite set of rules, modeled after the manual calculations performed by human computers.
claimAlan Turing defined a 'Standard Description' (S.D.) as a symbolic representation of the rules governing a computing machine.
claimThe Turing Test, originally called the 'Imitation Game' by Alan Turing, posits that if an artificial intelligence can convincingly behave like an intelligent human, it must be concluded that the artificial intelligence is intelligent.
claimAlan Turing formalized the concept of 'platform independence' or 'multiple realizability,' which posits that the same function can be computed on an infinite variety of different computational substrates or platforms.
Theories and Methods of Consciousness biomedres.us Jan 29, 2024 1 fact
claimLacalli T explored insights from Alan Turing and the shaping of experience in the context of evolving consciousness in 2020.
Understanding LLM Understanding skywritingspress.ca Jun 14, 2024 1 fact
claimThe Turing test was originally formulated by Alan Turing as an operational answer to the question, 'Can a machine think?', because there is no precise, scientific definition of what it means to think.
Consciousness and AI - Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science oecs.mit.edu Feb 5, 2026 1 fact
claimAlan Turing, in his 1950 work, urged the field of artificial intelligence to focus on studying behavioral capacities rather than explicitly investigating consciousness.
Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2016 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Aug 19, 2003 1 fact
perspectiveRoger Penrose argued that Alan Turing's halting problem has consequences similar to Gödel's theorem, suggesting that there are rational forms of thought humans can exhibit that a physical mind cannot.
AI Sessions #9: The Case Against AI Consciousness (with Anil Seth) conspicuouscognition.com Feb 17, 2026 1 fact
claimIn the standard definition established by Alan Turing, computation is defined as a mapping between a set of symbols through a series of steps, known as an algorithm.