Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
About this course
In 1950 Alan Turing proposed replacing "can machines think?" with "can a machine fool a human interrogator?" The shift from ontology to behaviour was revolutionary. Seventy-five years later, large language models can fool humans in short conversations. Whether they think is still unknown.
This course traces the argument from Turing's 1950 paper through the Chinese Room to modern AI, confronting the question that Turing could not resolve: is behavioural indistinguishability sufficient for intelligence?
Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum — who was prosecuted for being who he was, and died at forty-one.
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Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
The question
A Turing Machine follows rules — nothing else. Every modern computer is an implementation of this 1936 abstraction. Can rule-following ever constitute thinking? Are there human cognitive processes that are NOT rule-following?
Outcome
The student can explain the Turing Machine and evaluate whether rule-following can constitute thinking.
Sub-units
Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
The question
Turing proposed a behavioural test — not a philosophical criterion. If a machine can fool a human interrogator, we should treat it as intelligent by the only criterion that can be tested. Is this a solution to the question, or an evasion of it?
Outcome
The student can describe the imitation game accurately and evaluate two of Turing's nine objections.
Sub-units
Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
The question
Searle locked himself in a room with a Chinese rulebook. Chinese goes in, Chinese comes out. The room appears to understand. Searle understands nothing. Does this prove that formal symbol-manipulation cannot produce understanding — or is the room, as a system, actually understanding?
Outcome
The student can explain the Chinese Room and evaluate whether the systems reply succeeds.
Sub-units
Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
The question
Turing proposed building a child machine and educating it rather than programming an adult mind. Modern LLMs are trained on human text — they learn patterns rather than follow rules. Has Turing's approach been vindicated — and does pattern-learning constitute intelligence?
Outcome
The student can explain how modern AI relates to Turing's child machine proposal.
Sub-units
Led by Alan Turing Simulacrum
The question
How would you prove to someone who doubted it that you are conscious? Now apply the same standard to a machine. What follows? And does the answer matter — practically, ethically, philosophically?
Outcome
The student can articulate the hard problem of consciousness and take a defended position on whether the question matters.
Sub-units