Thinking machines: Some fundamental confusions [Book Review]

Minds and Machines 7 (2):269-87 (1997)
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Abstract

  This paper explores Church's Thesis and related claims madeby Turing. Church's Thesis concerns computable numerical functions, whileTuring's claims concern both procedures for manipulating uninterpreted marksand machines that generate the results that these procedures would yield. Itis argued that Turing's claims are true, and that they support (the truth of)Church's Thesis. It is further argued that the truth of Turing's and Church'sTheses has no interesting consequences for human cognition or cognitiveabilities. The Theses don't even mean that computers can do as much as peoplecan when it comes to carrying out effective procedures. For carrying out aprocedure is a purposive, intentional activity. No actual machine does, orcan do, as much

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John T. Kearns
State University of New York, Buffalo

References found in this work

An Unsolvable Problem of Elementary Number Theory.Alonzo Church - 1936 - Journal of Symbolic Logic 1 (2):73-74.
Reflections on Church's thesis.Stephen C. Kleene - 1987 - Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 28 (4):490-498.
Understanding church's thesis.Stewart Shapiro - 1981 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 10 (3):353--65.
Combinatory Logic Vol. 1.Haskell Brooks Curry & Robert M. Feys - 1958 - Amsterdam, Netherlands: North-Holland Publishing Company.

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