Alan Turing — "We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold por…"
We are not interested in the fact that the brain has the consistency of cold porridge.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Alan Turing
"The human mind is a parallel processor."
"The computer is a universal simulator."
"No, I am not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I am after is just a mediocre brain, something like the Brain of the Man in the Street."
"The machine should be able to learn from experience."
"The imitation game is a test of intelligence, not a test of consciousness."
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
The physical substance of the brain is irrelevant to understanding intelligence. What matters is how information is organized and processed, not whether it runs on neurons or transistors. Turing argues that mind is substrate-independent: a machine that reasons correctly is reasoning, regardless of construction. The squishy reality of biological tissue tells us nothing useful about the nature of thought itself.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing's career was built on abstraction — reducing computation to pure logical essence via the theoretical Turing machine. His 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' proposed judging machine thought by behavior alone, not physical construction. Turing was prosecuted and chemically castrated by the British government for his homosexuality — a man literally persecuted for his biology. His dismissal of physical substrate carries unmistakable personal weight.
The era
In the early 1950s, the first electronic computers existed but were considered glorified calculators. The brain was assumed biologically unique — no machine could truly think. Neuroscience was primitive; the physical brain was mysterious and sacrosanct. Turing's quote directly challenged this biological exceptionalism. Simultaneously, the Cold War accelerated military and academic investment in machine intelligence, making the question of what separated human thought from computation newly urgent and politically charged.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].