Spirituality’ as reconceptualisation of the self: Alan Turing and his pioneering ideas on artificial intelligence

Abstract

This article investigates the underlying agenda of the philosophy of artificial intelligence (AI) – a discipline of computer science – and proposes a threefold model of ‘spirituality’ as reconceptualisation of the self, composed of one’s search, adaptation and transformation of self-knowledge, specifically concerning the rational humanity. By using the life and ideas of the father of AI and computer science, Alan Turing (1912–1954) as a case study, I will carefully examine his three stages of self-reconceptualisation and highlight the relevance of seeing spirituality as self-reconceptualisation for the current digital age.

Keywords:

• artificial intelligence
• Alan Turing
• spirituality
• digital age
• computers
• the imitation game
• Arthur Eddington

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. http://www.biblestudytools.com/lexicons/greek/kjv/pneuma.html. Accessed May 25, 2014. My emphases.

2. See Hegel (1976).

3. Hodges’s interview with Mrs. Turing, date unknown. See Hodges, Enigma, 11.

4. Edwin Tenny Brewster, ‘Preface’, in A Child’s Guide to Living Things (original title of Natural Wonders) New York: Garden City, 1913. Emphasis mine,

5. Turing’s letter to his friend Norman, 1952. Stored in Cambridge King’s College Modern Archive (hereafter referred to as CMA), AMT/D/14a.

6. See ‘Alan Turing’ by Turing’s brother, John Turing. The Shirburnian, March 1980. Stored in the Sherborne School Archive, 2011/006.

7. Jefferson’s letter to Mrs. Turing, in Lyn Irvine’s preface for Turing’s (1959, xiii).

8. Irvine, ‘preface’, in S. Turing, A.M. Turing, xiii. Emphasis mine.

9. The infection he received from drinking infected cow’s milk as a young boy had been eroding his health constantly throughout his life. Eventually, Morcom fell terribly ill on a trip back from an eclipse observation and was sent for an operation immediately (the Morcom family went to observe a total eclipse in Yorkshire in 1927, Hodges, Enigma, 46. However, the way Hodges arranges the timeline of events is casual and confusing: he notes on p.45 that ‘on Thursday 13 February 1930, he (Morcom) died’; yet on p.46 he writes the Morcom family trip in June 1927, during which Morcom was ill and received an operation. Morcom returned to school in late autumn and struck Turing with his thin look, supposedly in 1927. Confusingly, Hodges continues with ‘on the Thursday that Christopher died’, which leaves the year unclear. So it could only be that Morcom held on for another two years after his operation in 1927, and eventually died in 1930.

10. Letter from Sherborne. 16 February 1930. CMA, AMT/K/1/20. ‘Heaviness may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning’ is from The Bible, the Book of Psalms 30: 5.

11. Ibid.

12. ‘The unseen world’ supports Eddington’s view on quantum mechanics and modern science’s approach to knowing the external world as modern science uses inferences to create a mysterious world. The last chapter of NOPW is entitled ‘Science as Mysticism’.

13. CMA, AMT/C/29.

14. Eddington explains that in order to understand the physical world through physics and mathematics, it must be translated into pointers and indicators, such as measurements and abstract models. We are then able to deduce, calculate and extrapolate. However, Eddington argued that this only gives us an understanding of those pointers and indicators, not of the physical world itself. See Eddington, NOPW, 256–8.

15. Turing was a Cambridge student from 1931 to 1934 and a Fellow of King’s College between 1935 and 1952.

16. Leavitt conjectures that Turing and Atkins had ‘on-and-off’ sexual relationship because in his mind Atkins could not compare with the lost Morcom. See Leavitt, 20.

17. Turing’s letter 11 February 1937, CMA, AMT/K/1/54. Turing wrote, ‘I have dealt with Littlewood, Wittgenstein, Newman, Atkins …’.

18. Although at the same time someone in America had proposed a similar idea, regarding the undecidability of first-order predicate calculus – as Turing saw it, ‘doing the same things in a different way’. That was Alonzo Church, who later became Turing’s supervisor at Princeton. See Turing’s letter to his mother, CMA AMT/K/1. Undecidability is a decision problem for which it is impossible to construct a single algorithm that always leads to a correct yes or no answer. According to one of Max Newman’s biographies, it was under Newman’s advice that the final stages of the preparation of this paper was finalised. However considering this biography was complied by Newman’s son, some information regarding Newman’s contribution might have been exaggerated. See Newman (2010).

19. Gödel reported by Hao Wang, in Wang’s (1974).

20. See Hodges, The Enigma, ‘New Men to 3 September 1939’.

21. From Copeland’s correspondence with Peter Twinn 28 January 2001, 21 February 2001, in Copeland, The Essential Turing, 217. Also Public Record Office: National Archives (PRO), Kew, Richmond, Surrey. Document reference HW 3/82.

22. The term AI now in use did not appear until after Turing’s death, prominently in 1956 at the Dartmouth Conference where the field of AI was officially established. Turing’s original term machine intelligence remains in use especially in Britain. Copeland, TET, 353. Also see Copeland (2000) ‘What is AI’ in AlanTuring.net.

23. In this study, Turing also anticipated the concept of a genetic algorithm in a brief passage concerning what he calls genetical or evolutionary search further in Artificial Life. See Copeland, 463.

24. As Ned Block remarks, ‘An especially influential behaviorist definition of intelligence was put forward by A. M. Turing’. See Block (1995).

25. See Gottfried (1996).

26. Wittgenstein, in Anscombe and von Wright (1980), §1096 and Copeland, 41.

27. Criminal Law Amendment http://www.swarb.co.uk/acts/1885Criminal_Law_AmendmentAct.shtml. Accessed June 9, 2010.

28. See Turing.org.uk, http://www.turing.org.uk/turing/scrapbook/morph.html. Accessed November 7, 2013.

29. CMA, AMT/D/14a. The archive notes that this letter was written in 1952.

30. Mrs. Clayton’s letter also reveals the close relationship of Turing and Gandy, as it reads ‘The weekend before he’d had Mrs. Gandy over for the weekend and they seemed to have had a really good time’. This could explain why Turing was writing to Gandy in his last days. See Hodges, Enigma, ix.

31. CMA, AMT/D/4/4, 8 March, 1954.

32. Turing’s letter to Newman from Gandy (1950). CMA, A/8 and AMT/D/4.

33. Kemeny (1955). Off-print. CMA, AMT/A/2.

34. Ray Kurzweil interviewed by Jim Fleming, http://www.ttbook.org/book/transcript/transcript-ray-kurzweil-transcending-biology, accessed May 26, 2015.

35. http://oscar.go.com/video/2015-awards-ceremony-highlights/_m_VDKA0_4756q5vd, accessed April 22, 2015.

36. See Copeland (2014).