A case for weakening the Church-Turing Thesis

Bhupinder Singh Anand · arXiv (Cornell University) · 2011

We conclude from Goedel's Theorem VII of his seminal 1931 paper that every recursive function f(x_{1}, x_{2}) is representable in the first-order Peano Arithmetic PA by a formula [F(x_{1}, x_{2}, x_{3})] which is algorithmically verifiable, but not algorithmically computable, if we assume that the negation of a universally quantified formula of the first-order predicate calculus is always indicative of the existence of a counter-example under the standard interpretation of PA. We conclude that the standard postulation of the Church-Turing Thesis does not hold if we define a number-theoretic formula as effectively computable if, and only if, it is algorithmically verifiable; and needs to be replaced by a weaker postulation of the Thesis as an equivalence.

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