Yes: defines intelligence operationally/behaviorally
The Turing test defines thinking in terms of overt, measurable behavior. It offers a behavioral/operational definition of our ordinary concept of thinking.
Note: A similar debate takes place in the "
Is passing the test decisive?" arguments on this map, which deal with the question of what can be demonstrated by successful simulation.
Behaviorism: A school of psychology that takes the overt behavior of a system to be the only legitmate basis of research. We can distinguish philosophical (or logical) behaviorism from methodological behaviorism.
- Philosophical behaviorism is the position that mental states are reducible to sets of input-output correlations (or behavioral dispositions).
- Methodological behaviorism is a research program that restricts itself to the investigation of behavior and its observable causes.
Operationalism: A philosophical position asserting that scientific concepts should be defined in terms of repeatable operations. For example, intelligence can be defined in terms of the ability to pass the Turing test.