Computationalism, the Church–Turing thesis, and the Church–Turing fallacy

Gualtiero Piccinini

pp. 97-120

in: Synthese 154 (1), 2007.

Abstract

The Church–Turing Thesis (CTT) is often employed in arguments for computationalism. I scrutinize the most prominent of such arguments in light of recent work on CTT and argue that they are unsound. Although CTT does nothing to support computationalism, it is not irrelevant to it. By eliminating misunderstandings about the relationship between CTT and computationalism, we deepen our appreciation of computationalism as an empirical hypothesis.

Cited authors

Church Alonzo

Turing Alan