The Mind of Mechanical Man (Lister Oration)
Geoffrey Jefferson’s Lister Oration, delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 9 June 1949 and published in the British Medical Journal of 25 June 1949 (vol. 1, no. 4616, pp. 1105–1110), read in page scans in PubMed Central.
- Issued by
- No issuing record yet. A missing record is a gap in coverage.
- Authors credited
- No authorship claim recorded yet. The source record lists Geoffrey Jefferson.
- Dates
- No date claim recorded yet. The source record gives the publication date as 1949-06-25.
- Exact source
- The Mind of Mechanical Man (BMJ, 25 June 1949), page scans British Medical Journal 1 (4616), pp. 1105–1110; page scans in PubMed Central (PMC2050428) · published 1949-06-25 · Retrieved for the candidate pack on 2026-11-04 (SHA-256 c7740569465eb6b32b0d59294341d80f35d3fb731ea43a5bf691aa04c060cce3). PubMed Central scans of the journal pages; replaces the third-party facsimile as the evidence source (same wording). A third-party facsimile of the six pages (https://www.edoardolimone.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Geoffrey-Jefferson-Mind-of-Mechanical-Man.pdf, SHA-256 4e6ea632806197131de18f0bee5d407f7ddb4c4545a395030b13241e0703f1b8), read on 2026-11-03, has the same wording; its host’s permission is not established, so it is not a source.
Appears in
- Antecedent texts: machine intelligence before 1965 →1 record on this document
- Propositions about superintelligence, 1863–2025 →1 record on this document
Versions
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Documentary relations
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Articulates · 1
Propositions whose criterion a passage of this document meets. The record says what the text states, in its register; it is not evidence that the proposition is true.
- Behavioural tests as evidence of what a system isJefferson’s Lister Oration “The Mind of Mechanical Man” (BMJ, 25 June 1949) says that if a machine typewrites its answers, it may be said to have learned to write when it would be doing no more than telegraphic systems already do.1949-06-25 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗Behavioural tests as evidence of what a system is: propositions page →
Contests · 1
Propositions a passage of this document disputes, or a premise they depend on.
- A machine could thinkJefferson’s Lister Oration (BMJ, 25 June 1949) says that no mechanism could feel, rather than artificially signal, pleasure at its successes or grief when its valves fuse, and that only when a machine writes a sonnet or composes a concerto because of thoughts and emotions felt could it be agreed that machine equals brain.1949-06-25 · publication · Stated in source · Supported Inspect claim & evidence ↗A machine could think: propositions page →
Not recorded for this document: cites · cited by · explicitly credits · reports using a method from · method reported as used by · applies parts of · parts applied by · discusses · reports evaluation of. A missing record does not show that the relation does not exist.