Human Instinct
The question of whether or not a machine has the ability to think depends on the definition of thinking, like Turing stated in his article. If thinking is being able to imitate actions, then perhaps a machine could be a thinking thing if it could be programmed to replicate every action. Yet there is a part of humans that I do not believe could be programmed into a machine.
A human being is born with instincts. Many actions that a human being makes are based on instinct, something that a person does not think about or does unconsciously. While a machine could be programmed to do certain things in certain situations, it would not be possible to program a machine to do something, you can say, with out thinking. How would someone be able to make a program to react without thinking? It would be impossible. For example, the example given in class about how a human being laughs. This is done without thinking it’s just a natural reaction.
A machine could be programmed to do a variety of things in a given situation, and analyze each one, yet the machine could not be programmed to do something based on instinct, or what it feels is right because these are things that come from nature. A person does not choose to react or feel a certain way in certain situations, they are just instinctual things. These are decisions made without reason. Perhaps reason could be programmed into a machine, but how could a machine be programmed to not think or do what feels right because feelings and instincts come from nature and are not programmable. I even agree that a machine could be programmed to distinguished between feelings, and be able to identify them based on human actions and expressions, yet the machine itself would not be feeling. Because of feeling, which comes from instinct, a machine would never be able to completely imitate a human being.