A Preliminary Study On Turing's Thoughts On Machine Thinking

As an indispensable tool in the modem society, the importance of computer is self-evident, and the artificial intelligence based on computer can also affect the modern society to some extent. Turing is the earliest to be one of the great potential of the computer to understand on the basis of previous studies,he proposed the Turing machine and the universal computing machine, and put forward the Turing Test to measure whether the machines can think like human beings. From the perspective of logic of science, this paper makes a details analysis and summary of Turing's machine thinking thoughts, and makes a preliminary evaluation and reflection.In the first part, we mainly introduces the theoretical origins of Turing's machine thinking thoughts. In the study of thoughts of Leibniz, Frege, Godel and Babbage, it has deeply discussed the important influence given from Leibniz's dream, Frege's Begriffsschrift, Godel's incomplete theorems and Babbage's computing concept to Turing's machine thinking thoughts.In the second part, the Turing machine and the universal computing machine are discussed in details. First of all, Turing envisaged a machine that anything computable by any algorithmic process can be computed by it,this is called the Turing machine.Secondly, Turing described the Turing machine and its mode of the operation. Finally,based on the Turing machine, Turing proposed the universal computing machine, and emphasized the universality of the universal computing machine, the machine is more general than the Turing machine. A computer which can simulate any other Turing machine is called universal Turing machine. The universal computing machine can replace human beings to do the operations without any intelligence.In the third part, we discuss the Turing Test and the argument that the machine can think.Turing proposed a game like the test,the main purpose is to provide an approach of the assessment of the 'machine can think', Turing claimed that the Turing Test is not completely equivalent to the question 'Can machine think?',but it is close enough to this question. In addition, Turing also refuted the views which opposed that machine can think. He believes that a thinking machine will exist in the future.In the forth part, we make an overall evaluation of Turing's machine thinking thoughts. Turing did not put forward a definition of 'thinking',and then we investigate the views of Turing, contemporary philosophers and scientists on 'can computer think?'.We analyze Turing's machine thinking thoughts in details, and explore the enlightenment of the thoughts for contemporary philosophical and scientific research,in order to show the value of Turing's machine thinking thoughts and his important position in the history of philosophy and logic of science.