Wittgenstein versus Turing on the nature of Church's thesis (Q1103596)

The paper examines Wittgenstein's attack on the mechanist terms in which Turing had interpreted his computability results. One of the main Wittgenstein's objections was that the philosophical strand in Turing's paper ``On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem'' [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc., II. Ser. 42, 230-265 (1936; Zbl 0016.09701) and 43, 544-546 (1937; Zbl 0018.19304)] misrepresents the mathematical notion of computation. The author gives an extensive description of relevant events in mathematics and philosophy during the 1930s and considers the foundations and interactions of Church's Thesis, Turing's Thesis and other fundamental trends in computability theory of that time, with particular analysis of Wittgenstein's philosophical viewpoint related to that subject.