Editing Church–Turing thesis (section)

=== The thesis as a definition ===
The thesis can be viewed as nothing but an ordinary mathematical definition. Comments by Gödel on the subject suggest this view, e.g. "the correct definition of mechanical computability was established beyond any doubt by Turing".<ref>{{cite book |last=Gödel |first=Kurt |author-link=Kurt Gödel |orig-date=193? |section=Undecidable Diophantine Propositions |section-url={{google books|gDzbuUwma5MC|page=164|plainurl=yes}} |title=Collected Works |url={{google books|gDzbuUwma5MC|plainurl=yes}} |volume=3 |page=[{{google books|gDzbuUwma5MC|page=168|plainurl=yes}} 168] |editor-last=Feferman |editor-first=Solomon |editor-link=Solomon Feferman |date=1995 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-507255-6 |oclc=928791907}}</ref> The case for viewing the thesis as nothing more than a definition is made explicitly by [[Robert I. Soare]],<ref name="Soare">{{cite journal |first=Robert I. |last=Soare |author-link=Robert I. Soare |date=September 1996 |title=Computability and Recursion |journal=Bulletin of Symbolic Logic |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=284–321 |doi=10.2307/420992 |jstor=420992 |citeseerx=10.1.1.35.5803|s2cid=5894394 }}</ref> where it is also argued that Turing's definition of computability is no less likely to be correct than the epsilon-delta definition of a [[continuous function]].