English

A case for weakening the Church-Turing Thesis

General Mathematics 2011-12-25 v1

Abstract

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.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1108.4597,
  title  = {A case for weakening the Church-Turing Thesis},
  author = {Bhupinder Singh Anand},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1108.4597},
  year   = {2011}
}

Comments

22pages. an updated version of this manuscript is accessible at http://alixcomsi.com/30_Church_Turing_Thesis_Update.pdf . arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1003.5602

R2 v1 2026-06-21T18:54:09.445Z