Alan Turing — "The idea of a 'thinking machine' is not so absurd as it seems."
The idea of a 'thinking machine' is not so absurd as it seems.
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More from Alan Turing
"The machine has a definite state at any moment, which is determined by the instructions it has received and by the results of its previous operations."
"The human mind is an emergent property of the brain."
"The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any unproved conjecture, is quite mistaken. Provided it is made clear…"
"It is possible for a machine to have a memory in the sense that a human being has a memory."
"The original question, 'Can machines think?' I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Machines capable of genuine thought aren't an absurd fantasy — cognition isn't some mystical property exclusive to humans. Intelligence might be a process that can be replicated mechanically or computationally. Turing is pushing back against reflexive dismissal, arguing that if we can define what thinking is, we can ask seriously whether a machine could do it. The burden of proof falls on the skeptic, not the believer.
Relevance to Alan Turing
Turing's 1950 paper 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence' opened with 'Can machines think?' — the same provocation restated here. His Bombe machine at Bletchley cracked Nazi Enigma codes, proving mechanical processes could solve problems thought to require human ingenuity. He designed the Turing Test as a concrete measure of machine cognition. His entire scientific identity was built on treating intelligence as a computable, not mystical, phenomenon.
The era
In the early 1950s, electronic computers were new and widely seen as glorified calculators. Mainstream philosophy held that thought required consciousness, a soul, or biological substrate — machines were tools, not minds. Turing wrote directly against this consensus. Post-WWII technological optimism coexisted with deep skepticism about machine agency. The Cold War also sharpened interest in what automated intelligence could achieve for national security and scientific dominance.
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