Darwin's Dangerous Idea - Evolution and the Meaning of Life

434 THE EMPEROR'S NEW MIND, AND OTHER FABLES
The Sword in the Stone 435
suspicions. An obviously mechanical swami figure sat at a suspiciously enclosed
cabinet, the doors and drawers of which were sequentially opened (but
never all at once), permitting the audience to "see" that there was nothing but
machinery inside. The swami figure then commenced to play a game of
chess, picking up and moving the chess pieces on a board in response to the
moves of a human opponent—and usually winning! But was there, literally, a
homunculus inside, a little man doing all the mind-work? If AI is possible,
the cabinet could be filled with some collection or other of cranes and other
bits of machinery. If AI is impossible, then there must be a skyhook in the
cabinet, a Mind pretending to be a Machine.
Poe was absolutely certain that Maelzel's machine concealed a human
being, and his ingenious sleuthing confirmed his suspicions, which he described
in detail with an appropriate air of triumph in an article in the
Southern Literary Messenger (1836a). At least as interesting as his reasoning
about how the hoax was perpetrated is his reasoning, in a letter accompanying
the publication of his article, about why it had to be a hoax, a line of
argument that perfectly echoes John Locke's "proof" (back in chapter 1):
We have never, at any time, given assent to the prevailing opinion, that
human agency is not employed by Mr. Maelzel. That such agency is employed
cannot be questioned, unless it may be satisfactorily demonstrated
FIGURE 15.1. Von Kempelen's
chess automaton.
that man is capable to impart intellect to matter: for mind is no less
requisite in the operations of the game of chess, than it is in the prosecution
of a chain of abstract reasoning. We recommend those, whose credulity
has in this instance been taken captive by plausible appearance; and all,
whether credulous or not, who admire an ingenious train of inductive
reasoning, to read this article attentively: each and all must arise from its
perusal convinced that a mere machine cannot bring into requisition the
intellect which this intricate game demands.... [Poe 1836b, p. 89.]
We now know that, however convincing this argument used to be, its back
has been broken by Darwin, and the particular conclusion Poe drew about
chess has been definitively refuted by the generation of artificers following
in Art Samuel's footsteps. What, though, of Descartes's test—now known as
the Turing Test? That has generated controversy ever since Turing proposed
his nicely operationalized version of it, and has even led to a series of real, if
restricted, competitions, which confirm what everybody who had thought
carefully about the Turing Test already knew (Dennett 1985): it is
embarrassingly easy to fool the naive judges, and astronomically