References for Criticisms of the Gödelian Argument

I should be grateful for additions---john.lucas@merton.OXFORD.AC.UK

J.J.C.Smart, "Gödel's Theorem, Church's Theorem, and Mechanism", Synthese, 13, 1961.,

J.J.C.Smart, "Man as a Physical Mechanism", ch.VI of his Philosophy and Scientific Realism.

Hilary Putnam "Minds and Machines", in Sidney Hook, ed., Dimensions of Mind. A Symposium, New York, 1960; reprinted in Kenneth M. Sayre and Frederick J. Crosson, eds., The Modeling of Mind, Notre Dame, 1963, pp. 255-271; and in A. R. Anderson, Minds and Machines, Prentice-Hall, 1964, pp. 43-59.

C.H. Whitely, "Minds, Machines and Gödel: a Reply to Mr. Lucas", Philosophy, 37, 1962, pp.61-62.

Paul Benacerraf, "God, the Devil and Gödel",The Monist, 1967, pp. 9-32.

I.J. Good, "Human and Machine Logic," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 18, 1967, pp. 144-147.

I.J.Good, "Gödel's Theorem is a Red Herring", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 19, 1968, pp. 357- 8.

David Lewis, "Lucas Against Mechanism", Philosophy, XLIV, 1969, pp. 231-233.

David Coder, "Goedel's Theorem and Mechanism", Philosophy, XLIV, 1969, pp. 234-237, esp. p.236.

Jonathan Glover, Responsibility, London, 1970, p.31.

William Hanson, "Mechanism and Gödel's Theorems," British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XXII, 1971.

D.C. Dennett, Review of The Freedom of the Will, Journal of Philosophy, 1972.

Charles S. Chihara, "On Alleged Refutations of Mechanism using Gödel's Incompleteness Results", Journal of Philosophy, LXIX, no.17, 1972.

Hao Wang, From Mathematics to Philosophy, London, 1974, pp.319, 320, 324-326.

A.J.P.Kenny in A.J.P.Kenny, H.C.Longuet-Higgins, J.R. Lucas and C.H.Waddington, The Nature of Mind, Edinburgh, 1976, p.75.

Anthony Hutton, "This Gödel is Killing Me", Philosophia, vol. 6, no.1, 1976, pp. 135-144.

J.W. Thorp, "Free Will and Neurophysiological Determinism", Oxford D.Phil. Thesis, 1976, p.79.

J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Penguin, 1977, p. 219.

David Lewis, "Lucas Against Mechanism II", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, IX, 1979, pp. 373-376.

Douglas R.Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach, New York, 1979, p.475.

Emmanuel Q. Fernando, "Mathematical and Philosophical Implications of the Gödel Incompleteness Theorems". M.A. Thesis, College of Arts and Sciences, University of the Philippines, Quezu City, September 1980.

Judson C. Webb, Mechanism, Mentalism and Metamathematics; An Essay on Finitism, Dordrecht, 1980, p.230.

G. Lee Bowie, "Lucas' Number is Finally Up", Journal of Philosophical Logic, 11, 1982, pp.279-285.

P.Slezak, "Gödel's Theorem and the Mind", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, XXXIII, 1982.

Rudy Rucker, "Gödel's Theorem: The Paradox at the heart of modern man", Popular Computing, February 1985, p.168.

David L. Boyer, "Lucas, Gödel and Astaire", The Philosophical Quarterly, 1983, pp.147-159.

David Bostock, "Gödel and Determinism", private communication, November, 1984.

Robert Kirk, "Mental Machinery and Gödel",Synthese, 66, 1986, pp.437-452.

Added 24.2.97 In the recently published Proceedings, Machines and Thought, ed. Peter Millican and Andy Clark, Oxford, 1996, Robin Gandy gives a much earlier reference:

Emil L. Post, `Absolutely Unsolvable Problems and Relatively Undecidable Propositions---Account of an Anticipation', in Martin Davis, (ed.), The Undecidable (New York: Raven Press, 1965), pp.340-435, esp. pp.417-24.

David Chalmers has many links: click here for pursuing his links
This link worked when I tried it in December 2007.

David Chalmers' home page has now moved to http://consc.net/chalmers/ (I am grateful to David Pollard for keeping me up to date) Chalmer's previous web site was http://www.u.arizona.edu/~chalmers/

(and before that http://ling.ucsc.edu/~chalmers/mind.html
and before that http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~chalmers/biblio.html"
and http://ling.ucsc.edu/~chalmers/index.html)

I have not tried these latter recently, and am grateful to those who have E-mailed me his changes of address. If these links do not work, please let me know.

added 2004

Donald Gillies, Artificial Intelligence and Scientific Method, chapter 6 Other works are cited in J.R. Lucas, The Freedom of the Will, Oxford, pp. 174-6.

The following additions have been sent to me:
  1. http://www.dla.utexas.edu/depts/philosophy/faculty/koons/ntse/papers/Baird.html
  2. http://www.sdsc.edu/~jeff/Godel_vs_AI.html#note5 His E-mail is:Jeff Makey
  3. Penrose---Psyche: --http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/v2/psyche-2-07-feferman.html
    or. more fully:
  4. Psyche Vol 2 Symposium on Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind: http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/psyche-index-v2.html
    This also includes Penrose's response, Beyond the Doubting of a Shadow (I am grateful to David Pollard for this extra link)
  5. Lucas's fallacy modified: A Critique of Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness In his two most recent... --http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~caywood/papers/penrose.txt
  6. Damjan Bojadziev, Gödel's theorem for minds and computers
  7. Selmer Bringsjord, A refutation of Penrose's new Gödelian case against the computational conception of mind
  8. Matt Caywood, Lucas's fallacy modified: A critique of Penrose's Shadows of the Mind
  9. David Chalmers, Minds, machines, and mathematics
  10. Kari Coleman, Gödel propositions for the mind
  11. Daniel Dennett, Review of The Emperor's New Mind
  12. Harry Deutsch, Deconstructing mathematics and mind: Some implications of Gödel's incompleteness theorems
  13. Solomon Feferman, Penrose's Gödelian argument
  14. Rick Grush & Patricia Churchland, Gaps in Penrose's toilings
  15. Tim Maudlin, Between the motion and the act...
  16. Daryl McCullough, Can humans escape Gödel?
  17. Drew McDermott, [STAR] Penrose is wrong
  18. Roger Penrose, Beyond the doubting of a shadow
  19. Hilary Putnam, Review of Shadows of the Mind
  20. Brian Rosmaita, Minds, machines, and metamathematics
  21. Aaron Sloman, The emperor's real mind
  22. Bhupinder Singh Anand, Some Consequences . . , The paper is accessible in HTML format at: http://alixcomsi.com/CTG_06_Consequences.htm.
  23. http://dscreat.com/godel.html by Daniel Sadolevsky, E-mail dscreat@dscreat.com
  24. Ricardo Pereira Tassinari and Itala M.D.L. D'Ottaviano ``Cogito, ergo sum not machina`` is the most recent discussion I am aware of.

The Turing Test


  1. Stephen Cowley & Karl MacDorman, Simulating conversations: The communion game
  2. Robert French, Refocusing the debate on the Turing Test: A reply to Jacquette
  3. Stevan Harnad, The Turing test is not a trick
  4. Stevan Harnad, Other bodies, other minds (and Larry Hauser's reply)
  5. Jason Hutchens, How to pass the Turing test by cheating
  6. Michael Mauldin, Chatterbots, tinymuds, and the Turing test: Entering the Loeber Prize
  7. Peter Seibel, Turing Test, etc. http://www,javamonkey.com/resume/turing.html
  8. Stuart Shieber, Lessons from a restricted Turing test (and Hugh Loebner's reply)
  9. Thomas Whalen, My experience at Loebner Prize
  10. Shapiro, Stewart. "Incompleteness, Mechanism, and Optimism." _The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic_ 4 (Sept. 1998): 273-302. Available online in PostScript format at:
    may provide further useful links
  11. Roger Penrose, Beyond the doubting of a shadow, ???
  12. Hilary Putnam, ???,
  13. Robert E. Horn, Can Computers Think?, New Scientist, 10 July 1999. www.newscinetist.com. I have not been over these.
  14. A full discussion of the issues raised is now available Etica e Politica, 2003.
  15. ``Consistency, mechanicalness, and the logic of the mind - group of 2'' » Q Yu - Synthese, 1992 - Springer
  16. ``Both the anti-mechanist and I agree that the recursiveness and the consistency of proof''... 158 QIUEN YU ... S 1 is said to be QG-representable (Q for quasi) in $2 if .. (Cited by 3 - Related Articles - Web Search)
  17. ``Yu and your mind'', G. Priest - Synthese, 1993 - Springer
  18. ... ed.), Creativity, Kluwer, Dordrecht. Yu, Q .: 1992.
  19. ``Consistency, Mechanicalness, and the Logic of the Mind'', Synthese 90, 145-79. ... (Cited by 1 - Related Articles - Web Search)
  20. ``Further explanations of the Gödel scenario of the mind: A reply to Prof. Graham Priest'', Q Yu - Synthese, 1993 - Springer
  21. ``... Page 5. THE GODEL SCENARIO OF THE MIND'', 465 Yu, Qiuen: 1992
  22. ``Consistency, Mechanicalness, and the Logic of the Mind'', Synthese 90, 145-79. ...
Corrections and further additions welcome.

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