"A valuable collection both for original source material as well as historical formulations of current problems."-- The Review of Metaphysics "Much more than a mere collection of papers . . . a valuable addition to the literature."-- Mathematics of Computation An anthology of fundamental papers on undecidability and unsolvability by major figures in the field, this classic reference opens with Godel's landmark 1931 paper demonstrating that systems of logic cannot admit proofs of all true assertions of arithmetic. Subsequent papers by (...) Godel, Church, Turing, and Post single out the class of recursive functions as computable by finite algorithms. Additional papers by Church, Turing, and Post cover unsolvable problems from the theory of abstract computing machines, mathematical logic, and algebra, and material by Kleene and Post includes initiation of the classification theory of unsolvable problems. Suitable for graduate and undergraduate courses. 1965 ed. (shrink)

This paper focuses on two notions of effectiveness which are not treated in detail elsewhere. Unlike the standard computability notion, which is a property of functions themselves, both notions of effectiveness are properties of interpreted linguistic presentations of functions. It is shown that effectiveness is epistemically at least as basic as computability in the sense that decisions about computability normally involve judgments concerning effectiveness. There are many occurrences of the present notions in the writings of logicians; moreover, consideration of these (...) notions can contribute to the clarification and, perhaps, solution of various philosophical problems, confusions and disputes. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a modified and extended version of combinatory logic. Schönfinkel originated the study of combinatory logic (in [2]), but its development is primarily due to H. B. Curry. In the present paper, I will make use of both the symbolism (with some modification) and the results of Curry, as found in [1].What is novel about my version of combinatory logic is a kind of combinators which I call discriminators. These combinators discriminate between different symbols, and yield (...) values which are determined by the symbols which are their arguments. If the normal combinators investigated by Curry are considered as functions taking (combinations of) symbols as arguments and yielding symbols as values, these combinators can rearrange and cancel their arguments or introduce new symbols. (shrink)

Presents a new framework for understanding language, thought, and experience, and for carrying out research.