Alan Turing's Legacy - L'eredità di Alan Turing

The popular view that scientists proceed inexorably from well-established fact to well-established fact, never being influenced by any unproven conjecture, is quite mistaken. Conjectures are of great importance since they suggest useful lines of research.

Turing 1950

Alan Mathison Turing was born in 1912, exactly one hundred years ago. All over the world there are plenty of celebrations taking place to honor the British genius who changed once for all the history of science with his astonishing achievements.

His works were revolutionary in many different fields, ranging from mathematics to computability theory, from computer science to machine intelligence, from cryptography to mathematical biology. Among his results there was the negative solution to the Entscheidungsproblem, the invention of the Universal Turing Machine, the decoding of the Naval Enigma during the Second World War, the project of the first British stored program electronic machine called ACE, a clear influence in von Neumann's machine design, the first introduction of the machine intelligence strategies in Britain, the idea of Turing's Test, some important results in mathematical biology, etc.

This conference does not aim to be a celebration at all. Our proposal is twofold: on one hand we wish to discuss the real Alan Turing, his true projects, his scientific and technical objectives, his philosophical inspirations, his agenda, and the scientific contemporary groups who influenced and were influenced by his work; on the other hand we wish to analyze what is still alive of Turing's inheritance and which are the fields, that are still inspired by his insights. The speakers - some of which have researched in the same areas that Turing pioneered - will be asked to respond to the questions about how much they were influenced by Turing's results, but also which are the eventual negative influences that Turing's multifarious achievements and their standard interpretations caused in their views.

Our major scope is the description of the actual presence of Turing's results in many different research fields such as Computer Science, Logic, Philosophy of Mind, Machine Intelligence, Biology etc. In order to fulfill this goal we need an interdisciplinary perspective in order to understand the different, sometimes opposed, interpretations of his results. The reconstruction of the reasons for the standard interpretations (not always correct, and often partial with reference to the richness of Turing's thoughts) of some of his most famous results is crucial to understand his importance not only as a scholar but also as a symbolic presence in the history and philosophy of science and technology.

Friday, October 12, Aula Verra, Philosophy Dept. - Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, University of Rome Three - Via Ostiense 234 - 00146 Rome (Line B - Stop Marconi)

Welcoming participants	h. 9.00-9.20
Presentations conference	h. 9.20-9.30

First session: Chair Michele Abrusci

Lorenzo Magnani Creating Mimetic Minds. From the Unorganized Brains to the Universal Machines	h. 9.30-10.15
Francesco Bianchini Turing, the Test, the interaction	h. 10.15-11.00
coffee break	h. 11.00-11.15

Second session: Chair Mauro Dorato

Cristiano Castelfranchi Has Still Psychology a Future? If it is so, it is computational	h. 11.15-12.00
Massimo Marraffa Computational Functionalism at Fifty	h. 12.00-12.45
Valeria Patera The continuing theater of a discrete life. Refllection on the relationships betweeen life and science in Turing	h.12.45-13.30

Third session: Chair Roberto Cordeschi

Carlo Cellucci A Bottom-Up Approach to Computability	h. 15.00-15.45
Michele Abrusci Turing Machine and contemporary logic developments	h. 15.45-16.30
coffee break	h. 16.30-16.45

Fourth session: Chair Teresa Numerico

Giuseppe Longo Alan M. Turing: from the Machine to morphogenesis	h. 16.45-17.30
Marcello D'agostino Turing's impact on logic	h. 17.30-18.15
Marcello Frixione The Turing Test and the Interface Problem: A Possible Role for the Turing Test in the Methodology of Contemporary Cognitive Science	h. 18.15-19.00

Saturday, October 13, Aula 2, Philosophy Dept. - Sapienza University of Rome, Villa Mirafiori

Via Carlo Fea, 2 - 00161 - Rome (Line B, Stop Bologna + 10 minutes walk)

Fifth session: Chair Claudia Casadio

Giorgio Sandri Turing, Gödel and the Mind	h. 9.00-9.45
Teresa Numerico Alan Turing and intelligence as a social activity	h. 9.45-10.30
Rossella Lupacchini Turing: A Matter of Difference	h. 10.30-11.15
coffee break	h. 11.15-11.30

Sixth session: Chair Marcello Frixione

Donald Gillies The Role of the Concept of Turing Machine in the Invention of the Computer	h. 11.30-12.15
Roberto Cordeschi and Guglielmo Tamburrini Alan Turing and artificial Intelligence	h. 12.15-13.00
Conclusions	h. 13.00-13.15

Al convegno è associata la rappresentazione teatrale del testo "La mela di Alan", dedicata a Alan Turing e alla sua biografia personale e scientifica, intrecciata con la storia di due giovani hacker. Il testo scritto e diretto da Valeria Patera è già è andato in scena in Italia e all'estero.

La rappresentazione collegata al convegno si terrà martedì 20 novembre alle 21.00 al Teatro Palladium all'interno del Festival ROMAEUROPA con il contributo del Rettorato dell'Università di Roma Tre, del Dipartimento di Filosofia dell'Università di Roma Tre e del Dipartimento di Filosofia della Sapienza Università di Roma.

The video of Conference - Alan Turing's Legacy

Conference sponsored by:

PRIN Epistemological, cognitive and formal models of reasoning and scientific discovery

• Humanities Studies Dept. - Philosophy Section - University of Pavia
• Philsophy Dept. - University of Bologna
• Economic-Quantitative and Philosophical-Educational Sciences Dept. - University of Chieti and Pescara
• Philosophy Dept. - Sapienza University of Rome
• Political, Social and Communication Sciences Dept. - University of Salerno

Internationalization Project "International research and high education network" Philosophy Dept. University of Rome Three

Supported by Turing Centenary Advisory Committee (TCAC)

Visit the Web Site of Centenary