Alan Turing Quotes on Knowledge
Alan Turing's "On Computable Numbers" (1936) defined the concept of effective calculability through the abstract machine that bears his name and proved that the decision problem for first-order logic admits no algorithmic solution — establishing the mathematical limits of what can in principle be known by any mechanical procedure. "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (1950) extends the analysis from formal computation to thought, proposing the imitation game as a behavioral criterion for whether machines can be said to know anything in the sense humans do. The philosophical legacy frames the cognitive science and philosophy of mind that the second half of the twentieth century would develop.
Quotes
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Attributed to Alan Turing:
“Can machines think?”
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“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
p. 460. -
Attributed to Alan Turing:
“A computer would deserve to be called intelligent if it could deceive a human into believing that it was human.”
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“Mathematical reasoning is the exercise of a combination of two faculties: intuition and ingenuity.”
Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals," section 11: The purpose of ordinal logics (1938), published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, vol. 45 (1939) | In a footnote to the first sentence, Turing added: "We are leaving out of account that most important faculty which distinguishes topics of interest from others; in fact, we are regarding the function of the mathematician as -
“Mathematical reasoning may be regarded rather schematically as the exercise of a combination of two facilities, which we may call intuition and ingenuity . The activity of the intuition consists in making spontaneous judgements which are not the result of conscious trains of reasoning... The exercise of ingenuity in mathematics consists in aiding the intuition through suitable arrangements of prop”
Systems of Logic Based on Ordinals," section 11: The purpose of ordinal logics (1938), published in Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society, series 2, vol. 45 (1939) -
“Instruction tables will have to be made up by mathematicians with computing experience and perhaps a certain puzzle-solving ability. There need be no real danger of it ever becoming a drudge, for any processes that are quite mechanical may be turned over to the machine itself.”
Proposed Electronic Calculator" (1946), a report for National Physical Laboratory, Teddington; published in A. M. Turing's ACE Report of 1946 and Other Papers (1986), edited by B. E. Carpenter and R. W. Doran, and in The Collected Works of A. M. Turing (1992), edited by D. C. Ince, Vol. 3. -
“A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine .”
Intelligent Machinery: A Report by A. M. Turing," (Summer 1948), submitted to the National Physical Laboratory (1948) and published in Key Papers: Cybernetics, ed. C. R. Evans and A. D. J. Robertson (1968) and, in variant form, in Machine Intelligence 5, ed. B. Meltzer and D. Michie (1969). -
“Intelligent Machinery." This passage was one of the epigraphs to Cryptonomicon , the influential novel by Neal Stephenson , in which Turing was a fictionalized character. It shared a page with a quote from Imelda Marcos.”
There is a remarkably close parallel between the problems of the physicist and those of the cryptographer. The system on which a message is enciphered corresponds to the laws of the universe, the intercepted messages to the evidence available, the keys for a day or a message to important constants which have to be determined. The correspondence is very close, but the subject matter of cryptography -
“This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.”
The Mechanical Brain. Answer Found to 300 Year Old Problem' The Times newspaper, 11 June 1949 page 4 column 5. | The sentence in bold appears on the latest British £50 bank note featuring Alan Turing which was released on 23 June 2021 on what would have been his 109th birthday. -
“The Mechanical Brain. Answer Found to 300 Year Old Problem' The Times newspaper, 11 June 1949 page 4 column 5.”
This is only a foretaste of what is to come, and only the shadow of what is going to be. We have to have some experience with the machine before we really know its capabilities. It may take years before we settle down to the new possibilities, but I do not see why it should not enter any one of the fields normally covered by the human intellect, and eventually compete on equal terms.