Related papers: Finiteness of the universe and computation beyond …
The theory that all processes in the universe are computational is attractive in its promise to provide an understandable theory of everything. I want to suggest here that this pancomputationalism is not sufficiently clear on which problem…
Computational problems are classified into computable and uncomputable problems. If there exists an effective procedure (algorithm) to compute a problem then the problem is computable otherwise it is uncomputable. Turing machines can…
We investigate the Church-Kalm\'ar-Kreisel-Turing Theses concerning theoretical (necessary) limitations of future computers and of deductive sciences, in view of recent results of classical general relativity theory. We argue that (i) there…
Can a Turing Machine simulate the human mind? If the Church-Turing thesis is assumed to be true, then a Turing Machine should be able to simulate the human mind. In this paper, I challenge that assumption by providing strong mathematical…
This essay explores the limits of Turing machines concerning the modeling of minds and suggests alternatives to go beyond those limits.
We recall from previous work a model-independent framework of computational complexity theory. Notably for the present paper, the framework allows formalization of the issues of precision that present themselves when one considers physical,…
We revisit the question (most famously) initiated by Turing: can human intelligence be completely modeled by a Turing machine? We show that the answer is \emph{no}, assuming a certain weak soundness hypothesis. More specifically we show…
Taking the view that computation is after all physical, we argue that physics, particularly quantum physics, could help extend the notion of computability. Here, we list the important and unique features of quantum mechanics and then…
We turn `the' Church-Turing Hypothesis from an ambiguous source of sensational speculations into a (collection of) sound and well-defined scientific problem(s): Examining recent controversies, and causes for misunderstanding, concerning the…
Is the universe computable? If yes, is it computationally a polynomial place? In standard quantum mechanics, which permits infinite parallelism and the infinitely precise specification of states, a negative answer to both questions is not…
Is the universe computable? If so, it may be much cheaper in terms of information requirements to compute all computable universes instead of just ours. I apply basic concepts of Kolmogorov complexity theory to the set of possible…
Expanding upon the widely recognized notion of mathematical universality in Turing machines, a concept of thermodynamic universality in Turing machines is introduced. Under the physical Church-Turing thesis, the existence of a…
Finite Turing computation has a fundamental symmetry between inputs, outputs, programs, time, and storage space. Standard models of transfinite computational break this symmetry; we consider ways to recover it and study the resulting model…
As far as algorithmic thinking is bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations, the Church-Turing thesis appears to hold. But is physics, and even more so, is the human mind, bound by symbolic paper-and-pencil operations? What about the…
We introduce infinite time computable model theory, the computable model theory arising with infinite time Turing machines, which provide infinitary notions of computability for structures built on the reals R. Much of the finite time…
It is possible in principle to construct quantum mechanical observables and unitary operators which, if implemented in physical systems as measurements and dynamical evolution, would contradict the Church-Turing thesis, which lies at the…
Some contemporary views of the universe assume information and computation to be key in understanding and explaining the basic structure underpinning physical reality. We introduce the Computable Universe exploring some of the basic…
The Church-Turing Thesis confuses numerical computations with symbolic computations. In particular, any model of computability in which equality is not definable, such as the lambda-models underpinning higher-order programming languages, is…
The notion of computability is stable (i.e. independent of the choice of an indexing) over infinite-dimensional vector spaces provided they have a finite "tensorial dimension". Such vector spaces with a finite tensorial dimension permit to…
Physical processes are computations only when we use them to externalize thought. Computation is the performance of one or more fixed processes within a contingent environment. We reformulate the Church-Turing thesis so that it applies to…