The ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test?

Abstract

New philosophical insights are suggested by our experience with computer simulation of human qualities. In an attempt to overcome the division between analytic and “continental” philosophy, both the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of dialogue are used to extend the Turing Test, a famous operational way of checking whether robots can pretend to be in some respects indistinguishable from human beings. A thought experiment, conceived as the ultimate strengthening of the Turing Test, is proposed: Can sufficiently developed robots without human help bring up a child so that the child can acquire all human qualities such as genuine personal subjectivity, the understanding of numbers, etc.?