Turing and Grice on the philosophical grounds of rationality: intentions, categories, ends

Speranza

Nothing SPECIAL about this below, but a connection, that perhaps we are looking, between Turing and Grice as we see them both as 'analysing', now, 'rationality, or if we prefer, aspects of reason and reasoning -- rather than 'think', or 'intelligence'.

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/03/failing_the_turing_test045141.html

"Computers are artifacts. They aren't alive, and they don't have souls. By soul I don't mean a spooky mist that evaporates when we die. By soul I mean simply the classical meaning -- the intelligible principle (the form) of a living thing. Mental acts are powers of souls, and RATIONAL mental acts (acts of the intellect) are the powers of human souls. Souls of course can carry out computation of a sort; the soul is the form of a living thing, and many of the vegetative powers of living things, such a physiological feedback loops, are akin to input-output computation. But the intellect is a power of the soul that is precisely that which is not computation. The intellect is intentional, and has meaning, which is intrinsic reference to other. Computation is defined by constraint to its algorithm. What is not programmed is not computation. Computation intrinsically lacks reference to other. Intellectual mental powers are intentional, and are the powers of the soul that are not computational."

KEYWORDS: TURING, GRICE, RATIONALITY, REASON, REASONING.

There are other good references for this. Some explore the 'evolutionary' side to human rationality, too!

One being Stern's!

Without Good Reason : The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science: The Rationality Debate in Philosophy and Cognitive Science (Google eBook)

Edward Stein

Oxford University Press.

 

--- INTERLUDE: Editorial summary --

Are humans rational?

 

Various experiments performed over the last several decades have been interpreted as showing that humans are irrational--we make significant and consistent errors in logical reasoning, probabilistic reasoning, similarity judgements, and risk-assessment, to name a few areas. But can these experiments establish human irrationality, or is it a conceptual truth that humans must be rational, as various philosophers have argued? In this book, Edward Stein offers a clear critical account of this debate about rationality in philosophy and cognitive science. He discusses concepts of rationality--the pictures of rationality that the debate centres on--and assesses the empirical evidence used to argue that humans are irrational. He concludes that the question of human rationality must be answered not conceptually but empirically, using the full resources of an advanced cognitive science. Furthermore, he extends this conclusion to argue that empirical considerations are also relevant to the theory of knowledge--in other words, that epistemology should be naturalized.

 

---- END of Editorial Summary