René Descartes does not think that machines can speak like human beings because they do not have “reason.” About three hundred years later, Alan Turing insists that if machines can speak like human beings, they can think. In other words, Turing stands Descartes’s insistence on its head, as Roy Harris and Noam Chomsky point out. But Descartes insists that only human beings have “reason” so he never assumes that machines can speak. On the other hand, Turing insists that it is a matter of words whether machines can think or not. This means, as Turing claims, that the question, “Can machines think?” is not worth discussing. So Descartes’s and Turing’s arguments are not the same although Turing stands Descartes’s argument on its head.