Principles of interactive computation

Abstract

This chapter explores the authors' 10-year contributions to interactive computing, with special emphasis on the philosophical question of how truth has been used and misused in computing and other disciplines. We explore the role of rationalism and empiricism in formulating true principles of computer science, politics, and religion. We show that interaction is an empiricist rather than rationalist principle, and that rationalist proponents of computing have been the strongest opponents of our belief that interaction provides an empirical foundation for both computer problem solving and human behavior. The rationalist position was adopted by Pythagoras, Descartes, Kant, and many modern philosophers; our interactive approach to computing suggests that empiricism provides a better framework for understanding principles of computing. We provide an empirical analysis of questions like can machines think, and why interaction is more powerful than algorithms. We discuss persistent Turing machines as a model of sequential interaction that formally proves the greater power of interaction over algorithms and Turing machines. We explain that the Strong Church-Turing Thesis, formulated by theorists in the 1960s, violates Turing's original thesis about unsolvability of the decision problem and is a myth, in the sense that it departs from the principles of Turing's unsolvability result in his 1936 paper. Our analysis contributes to the book's goals towards the acceptance of interactive computing as a principle that goes beyond Turing machine models of computer problem solving. © 2006 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.