Thinking Machines
As the St. John’s College Summer Series concluded last night, Halley Barnet traced the history of thinking machines from McCulloch-Pitts neurons—logic gates in the brain—to Alan Turing’s question: When does a machine truly think? Barnet seems to subscribe to Turing’s view that if a machine’s behavior mirrors human reasoning, it probably is thinking. But are we hardwired differently? See my previous entry: Accumulate This!