God, souls, and Turing: in defense of the theological objection to the Turing test

It’s widely known that when Turing first introduced his “imitationgame” test for ascertaining whether a computing machine can think, he considered, and found wanting, a series objections to his position. It seems safe to say that one of these objections, the “Theological Objection” (TO), was regarded by Turing to be positively anemic, and that ever since he delivered his rapid (purported!) refutation over half a century ago, the received view has been that, indeed, this objection is as weak as can be. The present paper is devoted to showing that TO is not the pushover Turing, and others since, take it to be. ∗I’m greatly indebted to AISB for allowing me to present at the University of Reading symposium on Turing and his test; the presentation gave birth to this paper. I owe a special debt in this regard to Mark Bishop, who arranged all the specifics of my participation, provided invaluable guidance, and showed supernatural patience in waiting for me to get this paper done. Thanks are due as well to local host Kevin Warwick, whose student Huma Shah was invaluable, to John Barnden, Chair of the AISB, and to my colleague Jim Fahey for helpful insights.