雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第7章:運轉起來(14)
Implicit in these discussions was the materialist view that there was no autonomous 'mind' or 'soul' which used the mechanism of the brain.
(He had perhaps hardened his stance as an atheist, and his conversation was more free with anti-God and anti-church jokes than it would have been before the war.)
（艾倫也許已經堅定了自己的無神論信仰，與戰前相比，他對那些反上帝和反教會的玩笑更加不在乎了。）To avoid philosophical discussions about what 'mind' or 'thought' or 'free will' were supposed to be, he favoured the idea of judging a machine's mental capacity simply by comparing its performance with that of a human being.
爲了迴避關於思維、思想或者自由意識"到底是什麼"這樣的哲學討論，艾倫傾向於僅僅通過對比機器和人類的行爲，來檢驗機器的思維能力。
It was an operational definition of 'thinking', rather as Einstein had insisted on operational definitions of time and space in order to liberate his theory from a priori assumptions.
這是對思維的實驗定義，就像愛因斯坦對時間和空間進行的實驗定義，這使他的理論從先驗的假設中解放出來。This was nothing new—it was an entirely standard line of rationalist thought.
這並不新鮮，這是理性主義者的標準做法。Indeed in 1933 he had seen it on the stage, for in Back to Methuselah Shaw had a future scientist produce an artificial 'automaton' which could show, or at least imitate, the thought and emotions of twentieth century people. Shaw had the 'man of science' assert that he had no way of drawing a line between 'an automaton and a living organism'.
實際上在1933年，艾倫就已經在這個水平上進行思考了。蕭伯納的《千歲人》中，有位未來科學家發明了人造人，它能夠表現，至少是模仿，20世紀人類的思維和情感，而科學家無法區分人造人和生物人。Again, his Natural Wonders book had accepted the rationalist view, with a chapter called 'Where some of the Animals do their Thinking' which treated thought, intelligence and learning as differing only in degree as between monocellular animals and human beings.
《自然奇蹟》也接受了理性主義觀點，題爲《動物用什麼來思考》的文章中提到，單細胞生物與人類相比，在思維、智力和學習能力方面，只不過有着程度上的差別。It was no new idea, therefore, when Alan talked in terms of an imitation principle: that if a machine appeared to be doing as well as a human being, then it was doing as well as a human being.
因此，艾倫用模仿原則進行討論，並不是個新想法：如果機器表現得像人類一樣，那麼它就是與人類一樣。But it gave a sharp, constructive edge to their discussions.
這給他們的討論帶來了有力的建設性優勢。
