In the year 1950 Alan Turing published his influential paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", where he presented at first the idea of a machine, which is able "to carry out any operations which could be done by a human [being]" and insofar "can in fact mimic the actions" of a human being "very closely" (Turing 1950). According to Donald Davidson the remarkable feature of this idea is that it presupposes what a lot of people in the following discussion have missed as a decisive aspect of the behaviour of the machine: namely to understand what it does, i.e. to have an understanding of the meaning of the signs which the machine manipulates. This assessment is in some way similar to a lot of doubts about the fruitfulness of Turing's test by philosophers concerned with language and mind. In contrast to John Searle, as one of the prominent critics of Turing's idea, for Davidson this does not show the deficiency of the idea of the machine as a criterion for having thoughts. It rather proves that questions concerning the conditions of having thoughts depend on questions concerning the conditions of attributing thoughts. So when Donald Davidson explicitly focused on Turing's Test (1990) as a thought experiment his assessment was not at all completely negative, but rather ambiguous: on the one hand he regards the test as inadequate, on the other hand he concedes that it reveals some important aspects concerning the attribution of thought. My contribution to the still ongoing discussion about Turing's Test is meant to emphasize the significance of the argumentation by Donald Davidson as a philosopher who has been regrettably neglected in the assessment of Turing's test.
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