Alan Turing

Required Readings

Writing Assignment

This week's writing assignment should be submitted through the course's blackboard page. To submit it, you should go to the Discussion Board section, then open this week's forum, which is called "Week 12 Assignment". You should begin a new thread in that forum and post your answer to the question there.

Your assignment this week is to concisely summarize John Searle's "Chinese Room Argument", and then to speculate about how Alan Turing would respond to it.

This assignment requires that you carefully read and understand both primary readings this week, one by Turing and one by Searle. (The third required reading, by Kukla and Walmsley, will also probably be very helpful!) Because Turing died before Searle came up with his argument, the assignment also requires that you use some creativity to come up with an argument in defense of Turing's position that he never had a chance to formulate himself. A lot has been written on this topic, and you may want to do some research beyond this week's required readings. If you do, make sure that you cite any sources that you use, even if you don't directly quote them.

My main grading criteria will be as follows. (a) You should show me that you understand both Searle's and Turing's positions, and why they conflict. (b) Your summary of Searle's "Chinese Room Argument" should be accurate and concise. (c) Your response to the argument on behalf of Turing should be show that you understand his general understanding of artificial intelligence. (d) Ideally, your response on behalf of Turing should be a convincing one. (d) Your response should be written in clear and concise, grammatical English, which means that you should spend time carefully editing and proofreading it.

Your answer should be no more than 400 words long. It is due no later than Sunday, November 19th at 11:59pm.