Hi, This isn't something that I really know much about, but I'll put my understanding of the issue down in the hope that if I'm missing something then somebody will point it out and I'll learn something :)
The literal Church-Turing thesis states that all formal models of what constitutes a well defined process are in fact equivalent to the Turing machine model. This thesis came about after it was discovered that all the various formal models (lambda calculus, recursive function theory and many others) that had been proposed were provably equivalent to the TM model. It is worth noting that nobody has actually proven that this claim is true, it's more the case that all efforts to find formal model of "well defined processes" that's more powerful than a Turing machine model have all failed and so people assume that the thesis probably true. Some people take this a step further and claim that not only are all formal models of well defined processes equivalent, but in fact all well defined physical processes are also equivalent to the Turing machine model. This appears to be supported by the fact that no "well defined" physical process has ever been found that is more powerful than the Turing machine model. Thus in a sense this claim is very similar to the one above as it essentially rests on empirical evidence rather than hard proof. If this physical interpretation of the Church-Turing thesis is accepted then it follows that if the physical brain and its operation is a "well defined process" then it must be possible to implement the process that the brain carries out on a Turing machine. This is the claim of "Strong AI." Does that sounds correct to people? Cheers Shane Anand AI wrote:
-------Hi everyone, After having read quite a bit about the the C-T Thesis, and its different versions, I'm still somewhat confused on whether it's useable as an in-principle argument for strong AI. Why or why isn't it useable? Since I suspect this is a common question, any good references that you have are appreciated. (Incidentally, I've read Copeland's entry on the C-T Thesis in SEoC (plato.standford.edu).) I'll edit any answers for SL4's Wiki (http://sl4.org/bin/wiki.pl?HomePage), and thanks very much in advance. Best wishes, Anand
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