TY - JOUR
T1 - A natural axiomatization of computability and proof of church's thesis
AU - Dershowitz, Nachum
AU - Gurevich, Yuri
PY - 2008/9
Y1 - 2008/9
N2 - Church's Thesis asserts that the only numeric functions that can be calculated by effective means are the recursive ones, which are the same, extensionally, as the Turing-computable numeric functions. The Abstract State Machine Theorem states that every classical algorithm is behaviorally equivalent to an abstract state machine. This theorem presupposes three natural postulates about algorithmic computation. Here, we show that augmenting those postulates with an additional requirement regarding basic operations gives a natural axiomatization of computability and a proof of Church's Thesis, as Gödel and others suggested may be possible. In a similar way, but with a different set of basic operations, one can prove Turing's Thesis, characterizing the effective string functions, and - in particular - the effectively-computable functions on string representations of numbers.
AB - Church's Thesis asserts that the only numeric functions that can be calculated by effective means are the recursive ones, which are the same, extensionally, as the Turing-computable numeric functions. The Abstract State Machine Theorem states that every classical algorithm is behaviorally equivalent to an abstract state machine. This theorem presupposes three natural postulates about algorithmic computation. Here, we show that augmenting those postulates with an additional requirement regarding basic operations gives a natural axiomatization of computability and a proof of Church's Thesis, as Gödel and others suggested may be possible. In a similar way, but with a different set of basic operations, one can prove Turing's Thesis, characterizing the effective string functions, and - in particular - the effectively-computable functions on string representations of numbers.
KW - Abstract state machines
KW - Algorithms
KW - Church's thesis
KW - Computable functions
KW - Effective computation
KW - Encodings
KW - Recursiveness
KW - Turing's thesis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=52049125054&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.2178/bsl/1231081370
DO - 10.2178/bsl/1231081370
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AN - SCOPUS:52049125054
VL - 14
SP - 299
EP - 350
JO - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic
JF - Bulletin of Symbolic Logic
SN - 1079-8986
IS - 3
ER -