Quote:
Originally Posted by Buffy
I would hope that your "philosophical knowledge" would alert you to the fact that the phrase "most likely" has no truth-value, and that even if you dropped that qualifier to more explicitly state that "[a halting program's] definition demands that it not be able to operate on itself" requires at least some sort of outline of a proof to show the validity of the statement.
Craig's clarification that "operating on itself" refers to the program as a representation of an algorithm rather than the machine, is a different distinction which I had not considered might be tripping you up, but if this is what you mean by that inability to work on itself--something that's not clear because you still haven't gotten around to telling us anything about why you think this is problematic--then it's important to recognize that as Craig points out, the machine itself is not the subject of the Halting Problem, only the
algorithm is.
You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus, 
Buffy |
In the part you just quoted, it clearly states that there is no need to prove that a halting machine could not operate on itself because I am only bringing it up to outline the non triviality of Touring's assumption that a halting machine could opereate on itself..
That distinction is irrelevant. The machine is the algorithm and vice versa. Touring machines can do what any algorithm can do, and they can be encoded in a way that any Touring machine or algorithm could operate on them.
