Turing and Grice on the nature of the syllogism

Speranza

From: Hodges, Andrew, "Alan Turing", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = .

"[Turing's] last two years were particularly full of Shavian drama and Wildean irony."

"In one letter (to his friend Norman Routledge; the letter is now in the Turing Archive at King's, Cambridge) he wrote [the syllogism]:

Turing believes machines think.
Turing lies with men.
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 Therefore; machines do not think.

Hodges comments:

"The syllogistic allusion to Socrates is unmistakeable, and his demise, with cyanide rather than hemlock, may have signalled something similar."