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Accelerating Turing Machines

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Abstract

Accelerating Turing machines are Turing machines of a sort able to perform tasks that are commonly regarded as impossible for Turing machines. For example, they can determine whether or not the decimal representation of π contains n consecutive 7s, for any n; solve the Turing-machine halting problem; and decide the predicate calculus. Are accelerating Turing machines, then, logically impossible devices? I argue that they are not. There are implications concerning the nature of effective procedures and the theoretical limits of computability. Contrary to a recent paper by Bringsjord, Bello and Ferrucci, however, the concept of an accelerating Turing machine cannot be used to shove up Searle's Chinese room argument.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Philosophy Department, University of Canterbury, Private Bag, Christchurch, New Zealand

    B. Jack Copeland

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Copeland, B.J. Accelerating Turing Machines. Minds and Machines 12, 281–300 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015607401307

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