A non-expert view on Turing machines, Proof Verifiers, and Mental reasoning

Rina Panigrahy

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arXiv · 1011.0046

A non-expert view on Turing machines, Proof Verifiers, and Mental reasoning

Rina Panigrahy

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Abstract

The paper explores known results related to the problem of identifying if a given program terminates on all inputs -- this is a simple generalization of the halting problem. We will see how this problem is related and the notion of proof verifiers. We also see how verifying if a program is terminating involves reasoning through a tower of axiomatic theories -- such a tower of theories is known as Turing progressions and was first studied by Alan Turing in the 1930's. We will see that this process has a natural connection to ordinal numbers. The paper is presented from the perspective of a non-expert in the field of logic and proof theory.

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Rina Panigrahy. 2010-10-30. A non-expert view on Turing machines, Proof Verifiers, and Mental reasoning. https://arxiv.org/abs/1011.0046

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