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Honorary Professor Jack Copeland

Honorary Professor

School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry
Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
j.copeland@uq.edu.au

Overview

Jack Copeland FRS NZ is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, where he is Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing. In 2012 he was Royden B. Davis Visiting Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Department of Psychology at Georgetown University, Washington DC. His books include The Essential Turing (Oxford University Press), Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park’s Codebreaking Computers (Oxford University Press), Alan Turing’s Electronic Brain (Oxford University Press), Logic and Reality (Oxford University Press), and Artificial Intelligence (Blackwell); and he has published more than 100 articles on the philosophy and history of computing, and mathematical and philosophical logic. He is recognised as a leading authority on Turing's work, and in June of 2004, the 50th anniversary of Turing’s death, he delivered the first annual Turing Memorial Lecture at Bletchley Park National Museum and lectured on Turing’s life and work at the Royal Institution of London. He received the Scientific American Sci/Tech Web Award for his on-line archive www.AlanTuring.net. A Londoner by birth, he earned a B.Phil. with Distinction from the University of Oxford followed by a D.Phil. in mathematical logic. At Oxford he was taught by Turing's student and friend Robin Gandy. He has been a visiting scholar at the University of California at Los Angeles, a visiting professor at the universities of Sydney, Aarhus, Melbourne, and Portsmouth, and a senior fellow of the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a past president of the U.S.-based Society for Machines and Mentality and is the founding editor of the Rutherford Journal for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. His latest book, a highly accessible biography of Turing entitled Turing Pioneer of the Information Age, published with Oxford University Press in 2012.

Research Interests

  • History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
  • Mathematical Logic
  • Philosophy and Foundations of Computing
  • Philosophical Logic
  • Metaphysics
  • Artificial Intelligence and Philosophy of Mind
  • Philosophy of Religion

Publications

  • Book Chapter: Turing and the first electronic brains: What the papers said

    Proudfoot, Diane and Copeland, Jack (2019). Turing and the first electronic brains: What the papers said. The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind. (pp. 23-37) edited by Mark Sprevak and Matteo Colombo. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.

  • Journal Article: Alan Turing's lost notebook

    Copeland, Jack (2017). Alan Turing's lost notebook. Bletchley Park Magazine, 22-23.

  • Book: The Turing guide

    Jack Copeland, Jonathan Bowen, Mark Sprevak and Robin Wilson eds. (2017). The Turing guide. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

View all Publications

Publications

Book

Book Chapter

  • Turing and the first electronic brains: What the papers said

    Proudfoot, Diane and Copeland, Jack (2019). Turing and the first electronic brains: What the papers said. The Routledge Handbook of the Computational Mind. (pp. 23-37) edited by Mark Sprevak and Matteo Colombo. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.

  • Turing and the history of computer music

    Copeland, B. Jack and Long, Jason (2017). Turing and the history of computer music. Philosophical explorations of the legacy of Alan Turing: Turing 100. (pp. 189-218) edited by Juliet Floyd and Alisa Bokulich. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-53280-6_8

  • Alan Turing

    Copeland, B. J. (2016). Alan Turing. Encyclopaedia Britannica. (pp. x-x) Online: Encyclopaedia Britannica.

  • The stored-program universal computer: did Zuse anticipate Turing and von Neumann?

    Copeland, B. Jack and Sommaruga, Giovanni (2015). The stored-program universal computer: did Zuse anticipate Turing and von Neumann?. Turing's revolution: the impact of his ideas about computability. (pp. 43-101) edited by Giovanni Sommaruga and Thomas Strahm. Cham, Switzerland: Springer International Publishing. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-22156-4_3

  • Introduction: the 1930s revolution

    Copeland, B. Jack, Posy, Carl J. and Shagrir, Oron (2013). Introduction: the 1930s revolution. Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond. (pp. vii-x) edited by B. Jack Copeland, Carl J. Posy and Oron Shagrir. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press Books.

  • Turing and the physics of the mind

    Copeland, B. Jack (2013). Turing and the physics of the mind. Alan Turing: His Work and Impact. (pp. 651-659) edited by Cooper, S. Barry and van Leeuwen, Jan. Waltham, MA, USA: Elsevier. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-386980-7.50034-4

  • Turing versus Godel on computability and the mind

    Copeland, B. Jack and Shagrir, Oron (2013). Turing versus Godel on computability and the mind. Computability: Turing, Gödel, Church, and Beyond. (pp. 1-34) edited by B. Jack Copeland, Carl J. Posy and Oron Shagrir. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press.

  • Artificial intelligence

    Proudfoot, Diane and Copeland, B. Jack (2012). Artificial intelligence. The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Cognitive Science. (pp. 147-182) edited by Eric Margolis, Richard Samuels and Stephen P. Stich. New York: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195309799.013.0007

  • Turing and the Computer

    Copeland, B. Jack and Proudfoot, Diane (2012). Turing and the Computer. Alan Turing's Electronic Brain: The Struggle to Build the ACE, the World's Fastest Computer. (pp. 107-148) edited by B. Jack Copeland.. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Turing's test: a philosophical and historical guide

    Copeland, Jack and Proudfoot, Diane (2009). Turing's test: a philosophical and historical guide. Parsing the Turing Test: Philosophical and Methodological Issues in the Quest for the Thinking Computer. (pp. 119-138) edited by Robert Epstein, Gary Roberts and Grace Beber. Berlin, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4020-6710-5_9

Journal Article

Conference Publication

  • Invited lecture

    Copeland, Jack (2014). Invited lecture. AFO 49th International Science Documentary Festival, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 15-20 April 2014.

  • Keynote address

    Copeland, Jack (2014). Keynote address. AFO 49th International Science Documentary Festival, Palacký University, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 15-20 April 2014.

  • Hypercomputation

    Copeland, Jack (2013). Hypercomputation. ICCS 2013: 9th International Conference on Cognitive Science, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, 27-30 August, 2013.

  • Hypermachines: a growing shadow

    Copeland, Jack (2013). Hypermachines: a growing shadow. Thinking Shadows: Art of Memory and Morphogenesis of Ideal Entities, Bologna, Italy, 13-14 June 2013.

  • The imitation game: Alan Turing and artificial intelligence

    Copeland, Jack (2013). The imitation game: Alan Turing and artificial intelligence. ICCS 2013: 9th International Conference on Cognitive Science, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia, 27-30 August, 2013.

  • Tommy Flowers and the birth of the electronic digital computer

    Copeland, Jack (2013). Tommy Flowers and the birth of the electronic digital computer. Codebreakers' Legacy, Bletchley Park, UK, 9 November, 2013.

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