The Mechanical Philosophy (excerpt)
After a disappointment in the mechanistic view of the mind in Galilean terms, a new version of that view has emerged from Alan Turing, Hungarian-American Mathematician, who introduced the idea of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He suggested in his paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence," that if a computer engaged a conversation with a human being, and the human being didn't realize that he was talking to a computer, that computer would be considered an intelligent device. Although Turing didn't claim that such a computer would be conscious, Dennett and some other functionalists claim that in such a situation, that computer is conscious. Turing's test provoked a wide range of pro-and-con debates over whether a computer would be capable of doing whatever a human could do or not.