How to Pass a Turing Test

I advocate a theory of "syntactic semantics" as a way of understanding how computers can think (and how the Chinese-Roam-Argument objection to the Turing Test can be overcome): (1) Semantics, considered as the study of relations between symbols and meanings, can be turned into syntax-a study of relations among symbols (including meanings)-and hence syntax (i.e., symbol manipulation) can suffice for the semantical enterprise (contra Searle). (2) Semantics, considered as the process of understanding one domain (by modeling it) in terms of another, can be viewed recursively: The base case of semantic understanding-understanding a domain in terms of itself-is "syntactic understanding." (3) An internal (or "narrow"), first-person point of view makes an external (or "wide"), third-person point of view otiose for purposes of understanding cognition. We now and then take pen in hand And make some marks on empty paper. Just what they say, all understand. It is a game with rules that matter. Turing opened his essay "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" by saying that , ~ he would "consider the question, 'Can machines think?' " (Turing, 1950: 433). Rather than answer this provocative question directly, he proposed his now-famous experiment, whose outcome would provide guidance on how to answer it. He described the experiment by analogy with a parlor game that he called "the 'imitation game' " (Turing, 1950: 433), in which an interrogator must decide which of two people of unknown gender is male (A) and which is female (B). He then asked, ... 'What will happen when a machine [specifically, a digital computer; p. 436] takes the part of A [the man] in this game?' Will the interrogator. 468 W.J. RAPAPORT decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman? These questions replace our original, 'Can machines think?' (Turing, 1950: 433-434). Turing says nothing about what the suitably-programmed computer is supposed to do. Clearly, it is supposed to play the role of the man, but the man's task in the original imitation game was to fool the interrogator into thinking that he or she is conversing with the woman. Traditionally, this has been taken to mean that the computer is supposed to fool the interrogator into thinking that it is human simpliciter. However, read literally and conservatively, if the computer is supposed to do this by playing the role of the man, …