

The Philosophy of Computer Science - AdrianRossouw
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/

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AdrianRossouw
I was looking for articles to reference around the nature of logic in
philosophy and programming, but this is far more interesting I think..

This contains various different ways of thinking about computer science, such
as the nature of computation or abstraction.

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kijin
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is an immensely useful resource with
a great deal of authority behind it. I used it all the time in college and
grad school to get a quick, general understanding of any new philosophical
topic that I came across.

Just like Wikipedia, everything is properly cited and you will find all the
primary sources in the Bibliography. Unlike Wikipedia, SEP is carefully
curated by professionals, but I think it's an excellent example of
professional curation done right. Despite the fact that most articles are
written by people who are known to have strong opinions on the topics they
write about, the articles themselves are generally neutral and contain pro and
con arguments for various points of view. Because philosophical theories are
often highly controversial and there aren't many concrete facts that everyone
can agree on, Wikipedia's model is probably not appropriate here.

"Philosophy of Computer Science", however, is a relatively new addition to
SEP, and the low maturity of the field is easily noticeable. Too many topics
are squeezed into the same article (instead of being separated into their own
articles), and despite the author's effort to include diverse sources, it's
clear that not many people are making direct contributions to this field. But
I expect this to get better over time. SEP articles are frequently updated,
although not as often as Wikipedia. After a couple of major revisions, the
article will probably look much better than it already is.

Since computer science is very closely related to various other topics in the
logic and epistemology sections of SEP, I would also like to see more cross-
references... But it seems that SEP editors are less enthusiastic about
linking between articles than Wikipedia editors are. Most links are lumped
together in the "Related Entries" section at the end. After all, these people
are used to writing textbooks, not online encyclopedias.

