The Physical Church–Turing Thesis: Modest or Bold?

Piccinini, Gualtiero

doi:10.1093/bjps/axr016

Cited by 39 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…Bold versions of the thesis state, roughly, that "Any physical process can be simulated by some Turing machine." 31 The Church-Turing-Deutsch-Wolfram thesis (CTDW) is an example, though Piccinini emphasized that the bold versions proposed by different researchers are often "logically independent of one another" and that, unlike the different formulations of CTT-O, which exhibit confluence, the different bold formulations in fact exhibit "lack of confluence." 31 CTDW and other bold forms are too weak to rule out the uncomputability scenarios described by Cubitt et al 14 and by Eisert et al 19 This is because the physical processes involved in these scenarios may, so far as we know, be Turing-computable; it is possible that each process can be simulated by a Turing machine, to any required degree of accuracy, and yet the answers to certain physical questions about the processes are, in general, uncomputable.…”

Section: Physical Computabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Church-Turing thesis

Copeland

Shagrir

2018

Commun. ACM

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Section: Physical Computabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Church-Turing thesis

Copeland

Shagrir

2018

Commun. ACM

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“…Such epistemic desire 'felt' by a user can only be fulfilled if a computation's output, when it eventually appears, can genuinely inform the user in a non-trivial manner (Oberholzer & Gruner, 2016). The 'epistemic desire' (Piccinini, 2011)…”

Section: Our Notion Of 'Computation'mentioning

confidence: 99%

On More or Less Appropriate Notions of ‘Computation’

Gravell¹,

Grüner²

2018

SACJ

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Half a century after the emergence of computer science (a.k.a. informatics) as an academic discipline, the notion of “computation” is not yet “settled”. On the contrary: recent developments in the natural sciences, in mathematics, as well as in computer hardware engineering have also shaken the belief in the sufficiency of the “classical” notion of “computation” from the tradition of the Church-Turing-Hypothesis. In this paper we review the recent discourse on what is “computation”, and we clarify our own position within this discourse. Although we present some arguments about which notions of “computation” may be considered “reasonably acceptable” for our own historic era, we also emphasize that every science-philosophical notion (including the notion of “computation”) has its own long-term historical semantics which cannot be fixed once and forever. At this point in time, however, no compelling assertion can yet be made about the possibility of “hypercomputation” as proper computation.

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“…Computational processes like the one described in Equation (1) do not allow to identify a specific couple of input-output values, within the transition from input and output registers. This might be considered a minor problem, but it actually cause difficulties in satisfying one of the constraints for considering an effective procedure as evaluating a function [13], namely that one of reliability. More than that it is possible to highlight other descriptions of processes such as Equation (1) which do not support QPT and are perfectly coherent with both formalism and observation.…”

Section: A Joint Assumption For Pit and Qpt?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantum Parallelism Thesis, Many World Interpretation and Physical Information Thesis

Lini

2015

Philosophies

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The aim of this paper is to address a particular interpretation of quantum computational processes, namely, the so called Many World Interpretation (MWI). I will show that if such an interpretation is supported by the Quantum Parallelism Thesis (QPT) and the Physical Information Thesis (PIT) at the same time, then it falls under circularity. I will suggest, in fact, that as long as this variation states both PIT and QPT cannot furnish a physical explanation of the latter unless it is already stating the truth of MWI. This specific case suggests the more general conclusion that MWI and other accounts of quantum computational processes instill very different concepts of information. I will show that the concept instilled by MWI advocates is too abstract in order to be a reliable source for a physical interpretation of quantum computational processes. I will nevertheless then suggest that MWI is not completely useless for our understanding of quantum computation.

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The Physical Church–Turing Thesis: Modest or Bold?

Abstract: This is a preprint of a paper whose final and definitive form will be published in the

Cited by 39 publications

References 84 publications

The Church-Turing thesis

The Church-Turing thesis

On More or Less Appropriate Notions of ‘Computation’

Quantum Parallelism Thesis, Many World Interpretation and Physical Information Thesis

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