The Heart Sutra in Middle Chinese

Most people will know by now that the Heart Sūtra,《心經》  Xīnjīng, or Prajñāpāramitā-hṛdaya, was composed in China using chunks of text from Kumārajīva's early fifth century translation of the Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrika-prajñāpāramitā-sūtra, i.e. 《摩訶般若波羅蜜經》T 223, combined with a dhāraṇī similar to that found in a translation of the Mahāmegha Sūtra, i.e. 《大方等無想經》  T 12.387, and an introduction featuring the bodhisattva par excellence, Avalokiteśvara or 觀自在 Guānzìzài.† As such, the language of the Chinese text dates from what has been called the late Medieval period in China (600-1000 CE.) ,or a little before.

Mantra of the Heart Sutra
in seal script
The Art of Calligraphy

When we look at the Chinese versions of the text they are written in Chinese characters or 漢字(Hànzì). These same characters are still in use, mostly unchanged after all this time. One occasionally finds characters that have become archaic, or taboo, or that have shifted in meaning, but on the whole the Heart Sutra Hànzì have not changed. But what has changed considerably is the pronunciation of the characters. The language of the Medieval period is known as Middle Chinese and it is very different from Mandarin and other modern Chinese languages. The Indian parallel is Middle-Indic, of which Pāḷi is the best known example. Middle Chinese is still in the same language family as Mandarin, and so has many of the same features such as use of tones, monosyllables, and grammatical relations. The differences include different tones and many different syllable final sounds including more use of consonants (similar to Cantonese). Buddhist Chinese also features transliterations of Prakrit and/or Sanskrit words, e.g. 般若波羅蜜多 bōrě-bōluómìduō for prajñā-pāramitā; and some transliteration/translation hybrids, e.g. 舍利子 Shèlìzi for the name Śāriputra, where 舍利 transliterates Śāri and 子 translates putra. Some of these transliterations only make sense in Middle-Chinese, e.g. Buddha is regularly transliterated as 佛陀 Fótuó, nowadays almost always abbreviated to 佛 Fó. This makes more sense when we realise that in Middle Chinese 佛陀 was pronounced like bjut ta.

A number of schemes exist to transcribe Chinese using Roman letters. So we see 心 written as xīn, hsin, shin, etc. Most commonly these days scholars use the Pinyin system, which was proposed by the Chinese Government in the 1950s (fact check) and represents the Beijing accent. Pinyin can be used with diacritics to indicate tone, but is often used without (resulting in considerable ambiguity). It can sometimes be difficult to know which scheme scholars used in the past, because they almost never specified. The introduction of Unicode, making it easy to include non-Roman and non-standard characters in an electronic document, has greatly facilitated communication about these subjects because it is now easy to include Chinese characters in publications.

If you look up the Chinese pronunciation of the Xīnjīng you will almost always find the modern Mandarin transcription of the characters, rather than the pronunciation of the time it was composed. Mostly one sees the Mandarin version, or sometimes a Cantonese version. A character like 心 'heart' is pronounced xīn in Mandarin and sam in Cantonese, but was sim in Middle Chinese. Note that in Middle Chinese the relationship to Tibetan becomes more clear in this case. The corresponding Tibetan word is sems (pronounced sem) and a Proto-Sino-Tibetan root has been reconstructed as *siǝm. Tibetan sems, like Chinese 心 (below), is used to translate the Sanskrit word citta.

The pronunciation of earlier phases of Chinese is not obvious, because the writing system was not phonetic. However, pronunciation can be inferred from rhyming patterns in poems, and especially from the Chinese' own attempts to analyse these in rhyming dictionaries from as early as the Sixth Century. Wikipedia has a reasonably good article on reconstructing old Chinese. It's important to remember also that Middle-Chinese was not one language or dialect; just as modern written Chinese can represent different dialects, so can Middle-Chinese. Thus, one reconstruction is not going to represent all possible dialects or even all accents, just as English spelling does not.

There are various modern reconstructions of Middle Chinese pronunciation from written sources. I'll be basing this reconstruction on the book by Baxter & Sagart (2014) which contains 5000 characters. These authors insist on a number of caveats. Firstly, their notation is not a definitive guide to pronunciation, but a transcription scheme like Pinyin. They do admit, "in most cases we can be confident that the distinctions [in the system] are not artificial and existed in some variety of Chinese at the time". Other authors have attempted a true phonetic reconstruction, but Baxter & Sagart remain wary of such efforts and suggest that a great deal more research would be required for a true phonetic reconstruction. (2014: 12). In addition, Baxter and Sagart chose chose their notation to be ASCII friendly - i.e. so that it would be virtually independent of electronic platform.

The traditional way of describing a character is in terms of initial sound, final sound and tone. Middle Chinese tones don't correspond simply to Mandarin. There were four tones, though it's not entirely certain how these sounded:

平 píng  < bjaeng 'level'     - no mark
上 shǎng < dzangX 'rising'    - final X
去 qù    < khjoH  'departing' - final H
入 rù    < nyip   'entering'  - final -p -t or -k.

Initial glottal stop is indicated with an apostrophe. More information on the pronunciation of the reconstructions, and comparisons with other systems of reconstruction, can be found on the Wikipedia Middle Chinese page, The Baxter-Sagart transcription scheme can be found in the Wikipedia Reconstructions of Old Chinese page. Baxter and Sagart's tables are online here.

The text reconstructed below is 《心經》 T 251, attributed to Xuanzang (玄奘). The Chinese characters are followed by the Pinyin romanisation, the reconstructed Middle Chinese, and finally my translation. At the end I'll include the Middle Chinese version as a whole. Where a character's pronunciation has not been reconstructed by Baxter & Sagart, I've looked at Pulleyblank (1991), Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (which includes Middle Chinese pronunciation but no source information), and the Wiktionary entry (which includes information from a variety of named sources) to get an alternative and used red text to indicate these.

Given the state of our knowledge, there are inevitably some gaps and some uncertainties regarding tone. I think such a project will be intrinsically interesting and those with knowledge and skill will hopefully take up this first effort and improve on it.

† Avalokiteśvara is better known in Chinese by the translation used by Kumārajīva: 觀世音 Guānshìyīn 'watching the sounds of the world' (cf T 250). This was shortened to 觀音Guānyīn. It is sometimes said to be because of the death of the Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty (唐太宗; 599-649) to avoid uttering one of the characters in his personal name 李世民 Lǐ Shìmín. This is a traditional form of Chinese taboo, but that it applies in this case is disputed. Indeed, the word 世 'world' is so common it would be hard to avoid it completely. The form 觀自在 Guānzìzài ('watching one's existence') was introduced by Xuánzàng. However, they may also reflect a change in the underlying Sanskrit name, dating from about the 5th century. The name was originally Avalokita-svara ('examined sounds') and changed to Avalokita-īśvara 'examined lord'; a-ī > e according to Sanskrit rules) after the figure absorbed some of the attributes of the god Śiva, including the epithet Īśvara.

心經

Xīn jīng

Sim keng

Heart Sutra

觀自在           菩薩    行   深   般若波羅蜜多             時，
guān zì zài     pú sà, xíng shēn bō rě  bō luó mì  duō shí
kwan dzijH xawX bo sal hang syim ba nya ba ra  mil da  dzyi
When Avalokiteśvara bodhisattva practiced the deep perfection of wisdom,

照     見    五   蘊   皆    空，     度  一   切     苦   厄 。
zhào   jiàn wǔ   yùn, jiē  kōng    dù  yī   qiè   kǔ   è
tsyewH kenH nguX on,  keaj khuwng, duH 'jit tshet khuX 'eak
He saw the five aggregates as completely empty, and overcame all states of suffering.

舍利子           色    不   異    空，    空      不   異  色；
Shè lì zi       sè   bù   yì   kōng,   kōng   bù   yì  sè;
syaeX lijH tsiX srik pjuw yiH  khuwng, khuwng pjuw  yiH srik
Śāriputra, form is not different emptiness, emptiness is not different form

色   即    是     空，     空     即     是    色。

Sè   jí   shì    kōng,   kōng   jí    shì   sè. 
srik tsik dzyeX  khuwng, khuwng tsik  dzyeX srik   
Form is empty, emptiness is form.

* Middle Chinese uses the same character 空 for empty and emptiness. The Sanskrit mss sources disagree on the correct interpretation of this line

受、    想、    行、  識，   亦   復     如  是。
Shòu,  xiǎng, xíng, shi,  yì   fù    rú  shì
dzyuwX sjangX hang  syik, yek   bjuwH nyo dzyeX.

Vedanā, saṃjñā, saṃskāra, & vijñāna, are the same

舍利子        是    諸   法    空     相，
Shè lì zi   Shì   zhū  fǎ   kōng   xiāng,
syaeX lijH tsiX dzyeX tsyo pjop khuwng sjang
Śāriputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness;

不    生     不    滅，   不    垢  不    淨，    不    增    不   減。
bù   shēng  bù    miè,  bù   gòu bù   jìng,   bù   zēng  bù   jiǎn.
pjuw sraeng pjuw  mjiet pjuw gu  pjuw dzjengH pjuw tsong pjuw heamX

not born, not dying; not dirty, not clean; not increasing, not diminishing

是     故， 空     中      無  色，  無   受、   想、    行、  識；
Shì   gù, kōng   zhōng   wú  sè,  wú  shòu,  xiǎng, xíng, shi;
dzyeX kuH khuwng trjuwng mju srik mju dzyuwX sjangX hang  syik,
Therefore: in emptiness there is no form; no feeling, no thought, going? [choice], knowledge

無   眼、   耳、  鼻、   舌、  身、  意；
Wú  yǎn,   ěr,  bí,   shé, shēn, yì;
mju ngeanX nyiX bjijH zyet  syin  'iH
No eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind;

無  色、  聲、    香、    味、   觸、    法；
Wú  sè,  shēng, xiāng, wèi,  chù,    fǎ;
mju srik syeng  xjang   mjəjH tsyhowk pjop
No colour, sound, smell, taste, touch or dharmas.

無   眼     界，  乃    至     無   意  識   界；
Wú  yǎn    jiè,  nǎi  zhì    wú  yì  shí  jiè;
mju ngeanX keajH nojX tsyijH mju 'iH syik keajH
no  eye-element, up to no mind-cognition element

無   無  明     亦   無  無  明      盡，
Wú  wú  míng   yì  wú  wú  míng   jǐn, 
mju mju mjaeng yek mju mju mjaeng tsinX
Also no ignorance of exhausting of ignorance.

乃    至     無  老    死   亦  無   老   死   盡；
Nǎi  zhì    wú  lǎo  sǐ   yì  wú  lǎo  sǐ   jǐn;
nojX tsyijH mju lawX  sijX yek mju lawX  sijX tsinX
And even no aging and death, no exhausting of aging and death

無   苦、 集、  滅、   道；  無   智，  亦   無  得。
Wú  kǔ,  jí,  miè,  dào;  wú  zhì,  yì  wú  dé.
mju khuX dzip mjiet dawH  mju trjeH yek mju tok
No suffering, cause, cessation or way.  No wisdom, also no attainment

以  無   所    得   故，菩提薩埵        依   般若波羅蜜多           故，
Yǐ  wú  suǒ   dé  gù, pútísàduǒ      yī  bōrěbōluómìduō       gù, 
yiX mju srjoX tok kuH bo-dej-sal-twa yiX ba nya ba ra  mil da kuH
Since nothing is attained, the bodhisattva reliant on perfection of wisdom,

心  無   罣   礙。 無  罣  礙   故， 無   有    恐       怖，
Xīn wú  guà  ài. Wú  guà ài  gù,  wú  yǒu   kǒng     bù, 
Sim mju gwae ae. mju gwae ae kuH, mju hjuwX khjowngX po,
his heart is without hindrance. Since he is not hindered, he is not afraid,

遠      離  顛   倒   夢      想 ，   究    竟      涅   槃。
yuǎn   lí  diān dǎo mèng    xiǎng, jiù   jìng    niè  pán.
hjwonX lje ten tawX mjuwngH sjangX kjuwH kjaengH yeol ban
far from upside-down  dreamlike thinking and finally attains  nirvana

三   世    諸   佛   依    般 若  波  羅  蜜  多  故，
Sān shì   zhū  fú   yī   bō rě  bō luó mì duō gù,
sam syejH tsyo bjut 'j+j ba nya ba ra  mil da kuH
All Buddhas of the three worlds depending on the perfection of wisdom,

得  阿  耨   多   羅  三  藐    三  菩 提。
de  ā  nòu  duō luó sān miǎo sān pú tí.
tok 'a nuwH da  ra  sam mak  sam bo dej
attain anuttara-samyak-sambodhi.

故  知    般 若  波  羅  蜜  多，
Gù  zhī  bō rě  bō luó mì duō, 
kuH trje ba nya ba ra  mil da  
Therefore know the perfection of wisdom,

是    大    神   咒 ，  是    大   明      咒，
shì   dà   shén zhòu, Shì   dà   míng   zhòu,
dzyeX dajH  zyin ju    dzyeX dajH  mjaeng ju
is a great magical spell, is a great spell,


是     無   上     咒，  是    無  等    等     咒，
shì   wú  shàng  zhòu, shì   wú  děng  děng  hòu
dzyeX mju dzyangX ju   dzyeX mju tongX tongX ju
an unsurpassed spell, an unequalled spell.

能   除    一   切    苦    真    實   不    虛，
Néng chú  yī   qiè   kǔ   zhēn  shí  bù   xū
noj  drjo 'jit tshet khuX tsyin zyit pjuw khjo
It removes all suffering; it is truly real  not false ,

故    說  般 若  波  羅  蜜  多  咒。
Gù  shuō bō rě  bō luó mì duō zhòu,
kuH seol ba nya ba ra  mil da ju
Therefore, recite the perfection of wisdom spell.

即    說   咒   曰：
Jí   shuō zhòu yuē:
tsik seol ju  hjwot
That is to say the mantra which goes:

揭   帝　  揭    帝   般   羅  揭   帝   般   羅  僧    揭  帝　
Jiē  dì   jiē  dì   bō  luó jiē  dì   bō  luó sēng  jiē dì 
gjet tejH gjet tejH puɑn la gjet tejH puɑn la seung gjet tejH
gate gate paragate parasamgate

菩 提　 薩     婆    訶*

pú tí  sà  pó hē
bo dej sal ba xa
bodhi svaha

* Note. There are two different versions of the last word. The CBETA version of T 251 ends 僧莎訶 sēng shā hē, which is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word svāhā. However, the print editions of the Taishō notes that the Song, Yuan and Ming versions of the Tripiṭaka all had 薩婆訶  sà pó hē, where the two characters 萨婆 approximate the Sanskrit conjunct syllable sva. Since this makes for a better rendering of the Sanskrit svāhā, I've adopted it here.

Middle Chinese Heart Sūtra

Sim Keng

kwan dzijH xawX bo sal hang syim ba nya ba ra mil da dzyi

tsyewH kenH nguX on keaj khuwng, duH 'jit tshet khuX 'eak
syaeX lijH tsiX srik  pjuw  yiH khuwng, khuwng pjuw  yiH srik
srik   tsik dzyeX khuwng, khuwng tsik dzyeX srik 
dzyuwX  sjangX  hang syik, yek  bjuwH  nyo  dzyeX.
syaeX lijH tsiX dzyeX tsyo pjop khuwng sjang
pjuw sraeng pjuw  mjiet pjuw gu  pjuw dzjengH pjuw tsong pjuw heamX
dzyeX kuH khuwng trjuwng mju srik mju dzyuwX sjangX hang  syik,
mju ngeanX nyiX bjijH zyet  syin  'iH
mju srik syeng  xjang   mjəjH tsyhowk pjop
mju ngeanX keajH nojX tsyijH mju 'iH syik keajH
mju mju mjaeng yek mju mju mjaeng tsinX nojX tsyijH mju lawX  sijX yek mju lawX  sijX tsinX
mju khuX dzip mjiet dawH mju trjeH yek mju tok
yiX mju srjoX tok kuH bo-dej-sal-twa yiX ba-nya-ba-ra -mil-da kuH
sim mju gwae ae. mju gwae ae kuH, mju hjuwX khjowngX po,
hjwonX lje ten tawX mjuwngH sjangX kjuwH kjaengH yeol ban
sam syejH tsyo bjut 'j+j ba nya ba ra  mil da kuH
tok 'a nuwH da  ra  sam mak  sam bo dej
kuH trje ba nya ba ra  mil da
dzyeX dajH  zyin ju dzyeX dajH  mjaeng ju
dzyeX mju dzyangX ju dzyeX mju tongX tongX ju
noj  drjo 'jit tshet khuX tsyin zyit pjuw khjo
kuH seol ba nya ba ra  mil da ju
tsik seol ju  hjwot
gjet tejH gjet tejH puɑn la gjet tejH puɑn la seung gjet tejH bo dej sal ba xa

~~oOo~~

Bibliography

The Chinese text comes from the CBETA version of the Taishō edition of the Chinese Tipiṭaka.  

Baxter, William H. and Sagart, Laurent. (2014) Old Chinese: A New Reconstruction. Oxford University Press.

Pulleyblank (1991), Lexicon of reconstructed pronunciation in early Middle Chinese, late Middle Chinese, and early Mandarin. University of British Columbia Press.

What can the Turing Test Tell Us?

Alan Turing's contribution to mathematics, cryptography and computer science was inestimable. Not only did he shorten World War Two, saving thousands of lives, he advanced us onto the path of digital computers. His suicide after being coerced into hormone treatment is a massive blot on the intellectual landscape in Britain. It is an enduring source of shame. Turing's work remained classified for decades because of the fear that war might break out again and knowing how to break the complex codes used by the Germans was too valuable an advantage to throw away. Nowadays, cryptography has advanced to the point where keeping Turing's work a secret no longer confers much advantage.

Turing was prescient in many ways. Not only did he set the paradigm for how digital computers work, but he understood that one day such machines might become so sophisticated that they were indistinguishable from intelligent beings. He was the first person to consider artificial intelligence (AI). Thinking about AI led him to construct one of the most famous thought experiments ever proposed. The Turing Test is not only a way to distinguish intelligence, it is actually a way of thinking about intelligence without getting bogged down in the details of how intelligence works. For Turing and many of us, the argument is that if a machine can communicate in a way that is it indistinguishable from a human being, then we must assume that it is intelligent, however it achieves this. It's a pragmatic definition of intelligence and one that leads to a practical threshold, beyond which all AI researchers wish to pass.

However underpinning the test are some assumptions about communication, language, and intelligence that I wish to examine. The first is that all human beings all seem to be considered good judges for the Turing Test. I think a good case can be made for considering this a false assumption. The second is the assumptions that mere word use is how we define not only intelligence, but language. Both of these are demonstrably false. If the assumptions the test is built on are false, then we need to rethink what the test is measuring, and whether we still feel this is a sufficient measure of intelligence.

Turing Judges.

The idea of the Turing Test is that a person sits at a teletype machine that prints texts and allows the operator to type text. The human and the test subject sit in different rooms and use the teletype machines to communicate. A machine can be said to pass the Turing Test if a human operator of the teletype cannot tell that the subject is not human. This puts word use at the forefront of Turing's definition of what it means to be intelligent. 

Human beings use of language is indeed one of our defining features. Animals use faculties that hint at a proto-language facility. No animal uses language in the sense that we do. At best animals show one or two of the target properties that define language. They might for example have several grunts that indicate objects (often types of predator), but no syntax or grammar. There has been significant interest in programs that sought to teach apes to use language either as symbols or gestures. But most of this research has been discredited. Koko the gorilla was supposedly one of the most sophisticated language uses, but her "language" in fact consisted of rapidly cycling through the repertoire of signs, with the handler picking the signs that made most sense to them. In other experiments subtle cues from handlers told the animals what signs to use. More rigorous experiments show that chimps can understand some language, particularly nouns, but then so can grey parrots, some dogs, and other animals. Crucially they don't use language to communicate. In fact a far more impressive demonstration of intelligence is the ability of crows to improvise tools to retrieve food, or the coordinated pack hunting of aquatic mammals like orca and dolphins. So animals do not use language, but are none the less intelligent. 

Humans are all at different levels when it comes to language use. Some of us are extraordinarily gifted with language and others struggle with the basics. The distinctions are magnified when we restrict language to just written words. This restriction alone is doubtful. Language as written language, even if used for a dialogue, is only small part of what language use consists of. A great deal of what we communicate in language is conveyed by tone of voice, facial expression, hand gestures, or body posture. Those people who can use written language well are rare. So a Turing judge is not simply distinguishing a machine from a human, but is placing a machine on a scale that includes novelists and football hooligans. What happens when the subject responds to any question by chanting "Oi, oi, oi, Come on you reds!"? Intelligence, particularly as measured by word use, is not a simple proposition. 

The Turing Test using text alone would be more interesting if we could define in advance what elements would convince us that the generator of the text was human. To the best of my knowledge this has never been achieved. We don't know what criteria constitute a valid or successful test. We just assume that any generic human being is a good judge. There's no reason to believe that this is true. As I've mentioned many times now, individuals are actually quite poor at solo reasoning tasks (See An Argumentative Theory of Reason). Reason does not work the way they we thought it did. Mercier & Sperber have argued that at least one of the many fallacies that we almost inevitably fall prey to—confirmation bias—is a feature of reason, rather than a bug. M&S argue that this is because reason evolved to help small groups make decisions and those who make proposals think and argue differently to those who critique them. On this account, any given individual would most likely be a poor Turing judge. 

Humans beings evolved to use language. Almost without exception, we all use it without giving it much thought. Certain disorders or diseases may prevent language use, but these stand out against the background of general language use: from the Amazon jungles to the African veldt, humans speak. The likelihood is that we've been using language for tens of thousands of years (See When Did Language Evolve?). But writing is another story. Writing is unusual amongst the world's languages, in that only a minority of living languages are written, or were before contact with Europe. Writing was absent from the Americas, from the Pacific, from Australia and New Guinea. The last two have hundreds of languages each. Unlike speaking, writing is something that we learn with difficulty. No child spontaneously begins to communicate in writing. Writing co-opts skills evolved for other purposes. And as a consequence our ability to use writing to express ourselves is extremely variable. Most people are not very good at it. Those who are, are usually celebrated as extraordinary individuals. Writers and their oeuvre are very important in literary cultures.

So to chose writing as the medium of a test for intelligence is an extremely doubtful choice. We don't expect intelligent human beings to be good at writing. Many highly intelligent people are lousy writers. We don't even expect people who are gifted speakers to be good at writing, which is why politicians do not write their own speeches! Writing is not a representative skill. Indeed it masks our inherent verbal skill.

In fact it might be better to use another skill altogether, i.e. tool making. A crow can modify found objects (specifically bending wire into a hook) to retrieve food items. Another important manifestation of intelligence is the ability to work in groups. Some orca, for example, coordinate their movements to create a bow-wave that can knock a seal off an ice-flow. This is a feat that involves considerable ability at abstract thought, and they pass this acquired knowledge onto to their offspring. The ability to fashion a tool or coordinate actions to achieve a goal are at least as interesting as manifestations of intelligence as language is.

Language and Recognition.

My landlady talks to her cats as though they understand her. She has one-sided conversations with them. Explains to them narratively when their behaviour causes her discomfort, as though they might understand and desist (they never do). She's not peculiar in this. Many people feel their pets are intelligent and can understand them even if they cannot speak. Why is this? Well, at least in part, it's because we recognise certain elements of posture in animals corresponding to emotions. The basic emotions are not so different in our pets that we cannot accurately understand their disposition: happy, content, excited, tired, frightened, angry, desire. With a little study we can even pick up nuances. A dog that barks with ears pinned back is saying something different to one that has its ears forward. A wagging tail or a purr can be a different signal depending on circumstances. A lot of it has to do with displays of and reception of affection. 

Intelligence is not simply about words or language. Depending on our expectations the ability to follow instructions (dogs) or the ability to ignore instructions (cats) can be judged intelligent. The phrase emotional intelligence is now something of a cliché, but it tells us something very important about what intelligence is. A dog that responds to facial expressions, to posture and tone of voice is displaying intelligence of the kind that has a great deal of value to us. Some people value relationships with animals precisely because the communication is stuck at this level. A dog does not try to deceive or communicate in confusingly abstract terms. An animal broadcasts its own disposition ("emotions") without filtering and it responds directly to human dispositions. Many people would say that this type of relationship is more honest.

There's a terrible, but morbidly fascinating, neurological condition called Capgras Syndrome. In this condition a person can recognise the physical features of humans, but their ability to connect those features with emotions is compromised. Usually when one sees a familiar face there is an accompanying emotion that tells us what our relationship with the person is. If we feel disgust or anger on recognition, then we know them to be enemies, perhaps dangerous and we act to avoid or perhaps confront them. If the emotion is joy or love then we know it's a friend or loved one. In Capgras the emotional resonance is absent. With loved ones the absence of that emotion is so strange that the most plausible explanation often seems to be that these are mere replicas of loved ones, or lookalikes. The lack of emotion in response to a known face can be incapacitating in the sense of disrupting every existing relationship. In the classic novel, The Echo Maker, by Richard Powers, the man with Capgras is able to recognise and respond to his sister's voice on the telephone, but does not feel anything when he sees her. The same is true for his home and even his dog. The only way he can explain it is that they are all substitutes cleverly recreated to fool him. Only he isn't "fooled" which creates a nightmarish situation for him. 

The problem, then, with the Turing Test is that it is rooted in the old Victorian conceit about reason being our highest faculty. Reason was, until quite recently, considered to float above the mere bodily processes of emotion. In other words it was very much caught up in Cartesian mind/body dualism and the metaphors associated with matter and spirit (See Metaphors and Materialism). Reason is associated, by default, with spirit, since it seems to be distinct from emotion. We now know that nothing could be further from the truth. Cut off from emotions our minds cannot function properly. We cannot make decisions, cannot assess information, and cannot take responsibility for our actions. The Turing test assumes that intelligence is an abstract quality, separable from the body. But these assumptions are demonstrably false.

What Kind of Intelligence?

I've already pointed out that language is more than words. I've expanded the idea of language to include the prosody, gesture and posture associated with the words (which as we know shapes the meaning of the words). An ironic eyebrow lift can make words mean something quite different than their face value. The ability to use and detect irony depends on non-verbal cues. This is why, for example, irony seldom works on Twitter. Text tends to be taken on face value, and attempts at irony simply cause misunderstanding. This is true in all text based media. In the absence of emotional cues we are forced to try to interpolate the disposition of the interlocutor. Getting a computer to work with irony would be an interesting test of intelligence!

Indeed trying to assess the internal disposition of the hidden interlocutor is a key aspect of the Turing Test. Faced with a Turing Test subject I suspect that most of us would ask questions designed to evoke emotional responses. This is because we intuit that what makes us human is not the words we use, but the feelings we communicate. Someone who acts without remorse is routinely referred to as "inhuman". In most cases humans are not good at making empathetic connections using text - which is why text-based online forums seem to be populated with borderline, if not outright, sociopaths. It's the medium, not the message. Personally I find that doing a lot of online communication produces a profound sense of alienation and brings out my underlying psycho-pathology. Writing an essay however is far more productive exercise than trying to dialogue in text. Even the telephone, with it's limited frequency range, is better for communicating, because tone of voice and inflection communicates sufficient to establish an empathetic connection. 

So if a computer can play chess better than a human being (albeit with considerable help from a team of programmers) then that is impressive, but not intelligent. The computer plays well because it does not feel anything, does not have to respond to its environment (internal or external), and does not have any sense of having won or lost. It has nothing for us to relate to. Similarly, even if a computer ever managed to use language with any kind of facility, i.e. if it could form grammatically and idiomatically correct sentences, it would probably still seem inhuman because it would not share our concerns and values. It would not empathise with us, nor us with it. 

I suppose that in the long run a computer might be able to simulate both language and an interest in our values so that in text form it might fool a human being. But would this constitute intelligence? I think not. A friendly dog would be more intelligent by far. Which is not to say that such a computer would not be a powerful tool. But we'd be better off using it to predict the weather or model a genome than trying to simulate what any of us, or any dog, can do effortlessly.

An argument against this point of view is that our minds are tuned to over-estimate intelligence or emotions in objects we see. So we see faces in clouds and agency in inanimate objects. So an approximation of intelligence would not have to be all that sophisticated to stimulate the emotions in us that would make us judge it intelligent. For example, in movies robots are often given a minimal ability to emote in order to make them sympathetic characters. The robot, Number five, in the film Short Circuit has "eyebrows" and an emotionally expressive voice and this is enough for us to empathise with it. So perhaps we will be easily fooled into believing in machine intelligence. But this means that simulation of intelligence is insufficiently impressive because people are easily fooled.

This point is brilliantly made in the movie Blade Runner. The Voight-Kampff test is designed to distinguish "replicants" from humans based on subtle differences in emotional responses. The replicants are otherwise indistinguishable from humans. The test of Rachael is particularly difficult because she has been raised to believe she is human (the logic of the movie breaks down to some extent because we do not learn by Deckard persists in asking 100 questions if Rachael is answering satisfactorily). Ridley Scott has muddied the waters further by suggesting that the blade runner, Deckard, is himself a replicant, though based on the original story and the context of the film this seems an unlikely twist.

So there are two major problems here: what makes a good Turing test; and who makes a good Turing judge. The whole set up seems under-defined and poorly thought out at present. My impression is that passing the Turing test as it is usually specified is a trivial matter that would tell us nothing about artificial intelligence or humanity that we do not already know. 

Conclusion

It seems to me that we have many reasons to rethink the Turing Test. It seems to be rooted in a series of assumptions that are untenable in light of contemporary knowledge. As a test for intelligence the Turing Test no longer seems reasonable. On one hand the way that it defines intelligence is far too limited. The definition of intelligence it uses is rooted in Cartesian Dualism which sees intelligence as an abstract quality, not rooted in physicality, not embodied. And this is simply false. Emotions, as felt in the body, for example, play a key role in how we process information and make decisions.

As much as anything our decision on whether or not an entity is intelligent or not, will be based on how we feel about it, how interacting with it feels to us. We will compare the feeling of interacting with the unknown entity, to how it feels to interact with an intelligent being. And until it feels right we will not judge that entity intelligent.

In Turing's day we simply did not understand how decision making worked. We still thought of abstract reasoning as a detachable mental function unrelated to being embodied. We still saw reason as the antithesis of emotion. Now we know that emotion is an indivisible part of the process. We must now consider that reason itself may not have evolved for seeking truth, but merely for optimising decision making in small groups. At the very least, the lone teletype operator needs to be replaced with a group of people; and mere words must be replaced by tasks that involve creativity and cooperation. A machine ought to show the ability to cooperate with a human being to achieve a shared goal before being judged "intelligent". The idea that we can judge intelligence at arms length, rationally, dispassionately has little interest or value any more. We judge intelligence through interaction, physical interaction as much as anything.

As George Lakoff and his colleagues have shown, abstract thought is rooted in metaphors deriving from how we physically interact with the world. Our intelligence is embodied and the idea of disembodied intelligence is no longer tenable. As interesting as the idea may appear, there is no ghost in the machine that can be extracted or instantiated and maintained apart from the body. Any attempts to create disembodied intelligence will only result in a simulacrum, not in intelligence that we can recognise as such.

Buddhists will often smugly claim this as their own insight, though most Buddhists I know are crypto-dualists (most believe in life after death and karma for example). I've argued at length that the Buddha's insight was into the nature of experience and that he avoided drawing ontological conclusions. Thus, although we read the texts as being a critique of doctrines involving souls, the methods of Buddhism were always different from the methods of Brahmanism. The Brahmins sought to experience the ātman as a reality, and from the Upaniṣadic description ātman could be experienced as a sense of oneness or connection with everything in the world (oceanic boundary loss). Buddhists deconstructed experience itself to show that nothing in experience persisted and that therefore, even if there was a soul we must either always experience it, or it could never be experienced, and since we start off not experiencing it, no permanent soul can ever be experienced (which is not a comment on whether or not such a soul exists!). Therefore the experiences of the Brahmins are of something other than ātman. Only after Buddhists had started down the road of misguided ontological speculation did this become an opinion about the existence of a soul. So the superficial similarities between ancient Buddhist and modern scientific views is an accident of a philosophical wrong turn on the part of Buddhists. They got it partly right by accident, which is not really worth being smug over.

History shows that we must proceed with real caution here. Our Western views on intelligence have been subject to extreme bias in the past and this has led to some horrific consequences for those people who failed our tests for completely bogus reasons. We must constantly subject our views on intelligence to the most rigorous criticism and scepticism we are capable of. Our mistakes in this field ought to haunt us and make us extremely uncomfortable. This is yet another reason why tests for intelligence ought to require more interactivity. If we do create intelligence we need to know we can get along with it, and it with us. And we know that we have a poor record on this score.

The Turing Test seems not to have been updated to take account of what we know about ourselves nowadays. The test itself is anachronistic. The method is faulty, because it is based on a faulty understanding of intelligence and decision making. We are not even asking the correct question about intelligence. With all due respect to Alan Turing, he was a man of his time, a glorious pioneer, but we're moved on since he came up with this idea and it's had its day. 

~~oOo~~

See also: Why Artificial Intelligences Will Never Be Like Us and Aliens Will Be Just Like Us. (27 June 2014)