Motivating the Church-Turing Thesis in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Theory of Computation students frequently fail to appreciate the significance of the Church-Turing Thesis for one of two reasons. First, there is a tendency, on the part of students, to regard Church-Turing as tautologous and, consequently, devoid of important content. Second, there is a contrary impulse to view Church-Turing as unmotivated or even implausible. We describe our experience using simulation software in an effort to combat these two tendencies.