A Philosophicall Discourse Concerning Speech

Answers

• Q02THINKING

  Would a machine's ability to converse appropriately be sufficient evidence that it thinks?

  Yes. appropriate, novel speech is the evidence of a mind in another body. I know other bodies have minds like mine because their speech is new, fitting and cannot be explained by mechanical principles alone.

  Car il me semble que parler n'est pas répéter les mêmes paroles, dont on a eu l'oreille frappée, mais que c'est en proférer d'autres à propos de celles-là. … Mais aussi, si je trouve par toutes les expériences que je suis capable d'en faire, qu'ils usent comme moi de la parole, je croirai avoir une raison infaillible de penser qu'ils ont une âme comme moi. … Parler, à mon avis, n'est autre chose que faire connaître ce que l'on pense, à ce qui est capable de l'entendre; et supposé que les corps, qui ressemblent au mien, aient des âmes, je vois que le seul moyen de nous expliquer les uns aux autres ce que nous pensons, est de nous en donner des signes extérieurs.

  For it seems to me that to speak is not to repeat the same words that have struck the ear, but to utter others suited to them. … But also, if I find by all the experiments I am capable of making that they use speech as I do, I will believe I have an infallible reason to think that they have a soul like mine. … To speak, in my view, is nothing other than to make known what one thinks to something capable of understanding it; and supposing that the bodies which resemble mine have souls, I see that the only means of explaining to one another what we think is to give one another outward signs of it.

  OCR correctedmachine translation

  Gallica record for the 1668 French text and archive.org record for the 1668 English translation found; argument summarized from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Cordemoy. Did not read the text itself.