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The Church-Turing Thesis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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There are various equivalent formulations of the Church-Turing thesis. A common one is that every effective computation can be carried out by a Turing machine. The Church-Turing thesis is often misunderstood, particularly in recent writing in the philosophy of mind. The Church-Turing thesis concerns the concept of an effective or systematic or mechanical method in logic, mathematics and computer science. ‘Effective’ and its synonyms ‘systematic’ and ‘mechanical’ are terms of art in these disciplines: they do not carry their everyday meaning. A method, or procedure, M, for achieving some desired result is called ‘effective’ (or ‘systematic’ or ‘mechanical’) just in case: A well-known example of an effective method is the truth table test for tautologousness. In principle, a human being who works by rote could apply this test successfully to any formula of the propositional calculus—given sufficient time, tenacity, paper, and pencils (although the test is unworkable in practice for any f

--> The Church-Turing Thesis (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Menu Browse Table of Contents What's New Random Entry Chronological Archives About Editorial Information About the SEP Editorial Board How to Cite the SEP Special Characters Advanced Tools Contact Support SEP Support the SEP PDFs for SEP Friends Make a Donation SEPIA for Libraries Entry Navigation Entry Contents Bibliography Academic Tools Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top The Church-Turing Thesis First published Wed Jan 8, 1997; substantive revision Mon Dec 18, 2023 Th

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