Grice's discrete state machine -- and Turing's.

 

Speranza

 

"Computing Machinery and Intelligence" (Mind, 1950)

 

Indeed, Hodges is providing what he sees the philosophical basis for this. He writes in his biography of Turing:

 

"From a philosophical point of view, [Turing's 1950 "Mind" essay] could be said to fit in with Gilbert Ryle's "The Concept of Mind", which had appeared in 1949, and which put forward the idea of mind not as something added to the brain, but as a kind of description of the world."

 

Hodges goes on:

 

"But Alan's paper proposed a specific kind of description, namely that of the discrete state machine."

 

Now, Grice would possibly deny that HIS mind is a specific kind of description, namely that of the discrete state machine.

 

One must confess that one loves Turing's taxonomies of things!