FOM: Re: The Church Thesis

[charles silver]

From: Marcin Mostowski

Marcin Mostowski wrote:

>The abstract of the paper follows.
>
>In this paper we consider the ``mathematical'' proof of Church
>Thesis.

    I don't understand what would constitute a proof of Church's
Thesis, since the notion of an effectively computable function is an
intuitive concept, not a mathematical one.   I can understand what a
disproof might look like.  Suppose someone were to present a function
that seemed intuitively effectively computable but wasn't recursive.
If this view became widespread in the mathematical community (that the
given non-recursive function was intuitively effectively computable),
then Church's Thesis would be thought false.

Charlie Silver