
Philosophy of Computer Science - FarhadG
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/computer-science/
======
mstank
Wow, never thought there would be a day where my favorite college philosophy
time-sink graced the pages of my favorite work time-sink. Mind, blown.

Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a peer-reviewed, academia level
resource. Basically a classroom accepted Philosophy Wikipedia. I wonder if
there are similar academic resources for other subjects?

Detailed articles on Turing and the Turing Machine.

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing/>

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/>

~~~
sounds
The hours whiled away on plato.stanford.edu shouldn't count toward a man's
life. :)

Something I'm not grokking:

In the exposition the list of examples presented as typical of Computer
Science – "certainly not just programming" – is this one at the end of the
list:

"... the design of embedded systems ..."

Huh?

Why doesn't that fit? There is no further direct discussion on the page that
could apply (that I found). Is it a modern perspective that the embedded world
and the high-end world are becoming so blurred as to be identical (such as
Linux on both)? Is it simply Moore's law in action reducing the cost of
embedded solutions to the point that embedded design is no longer something
special?

The other examples, "the construction and optimisation of compilers,
interpreters, theorem provers and type inference systems," clearly hit meta-
activity more than "just programming."

Maybe it means embedded design is a transcendent synthesis?
<http://catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html>

~~~
VLM
In a word/acronym, RTOS. Its forest of O(1) algos and insane low latency
reliable guaranteed response.

The joy of (hardware related) spinlocks and related contention control algos
that non-embedded systems would resolve with the reset button and/or blaming
the operator.

Mergers of a lot of classical engineering control theory and computer science
(although not limited solely to embedded).

I don't think anyone in industry writes mathematically provably correct
software except embedded aerospace.

As much as it pains me to say it, on a multidecade basis, exception handling
and testing seems to be retreating to life-critical embedded work, even if in
the rest of the biz those topics get a lot of PR.

I think they're writing about "real" embedded like the space shuttle autopilot
as opposed to "its just a PC w/ PC app, but not typical PC hardware and
outside a cubicle" like an asterisk appliance or a linux based small NAS
appliance.

~~~
sounds
Much appreciated, thanks!

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MichaelGG
Excuse my ignorance on this; I am actually interested in understanding.

I started reading this page and it seemed like some of it was just arguing
about definitions and the rest, well, I can't say I really understood it. I
get the feeling it's just sort of a "useless" discussion about words.

Beyond computer science, I guess I just don't understand the current
contributions of philosophy or philosophy of science to actual science. The
fact it links to metaphysics sorta reinforces the useless notion I have of it.
I can't determine if it's actually nonsense (like Derrida/deconstructionism)
or if I'm just not thinking hard enough.

Can someone clue me in as to what you find so valuable here?

~~~
empthought
I think in the general sense, any "contributions of philosophy or philosophy
of science to actual science" would end up being science, not philosophy.
Consider the different interpretations of quantum mechanics -- in an earlier
age these sorts of discussions would fall under the rubric of natural
philosophy. However, nowadays these theoretical and experimental discussions
are properly conducted within the sphere of physics.

So to look for direct contributions of philosophy to science is to commit a
kind of category mistake, since science is a self-correcting model based on
experimental verification of theory. Anything that can be verified (well, more
pointedly, falsified) through experimentation is within the domain of science
-- it _is_ science. Anything that can't really be falsified through
experimentation doesn't really have a place within the scientific framework.

Now, it takes a philosophy of science to make this separation of non-science
from science, so that's at least one indirect contribution anyway.

~~~
anythinggoes
I am afraid you are simplifying the scientific progress quite a bit with "we
have a model, then we look for empiric data and if there is conclusive
evidence we can conclude that the model matches reality". It has been shown by
many historians (e.g. Thomas Kuhn) that in reality scientists do not just
follow these guidelines and in many cases scientific models use assumptions
that cannot be verified or falsified, nor would it make sense to adhere to
such strict rules.

If you are interested in this topic I also recommend the discussion of Karl
Popper and Paul Feyerabend, which has been a very important contribution to
how we now think about scientific progress.

Hence I tend to disagree with you and in fact you could probably say that many
of the theoretical discussions you find in Physics (such as Quantum Mechanics)
can be seen as being actually closer to Philosophical debate.

~~~
empthought
I admit to simplifying a bit, but I don't think the sociological turn in the
philosophy of science is relevant to the original question.

The point is that scientific propositions are evaluated based on their
predictive success in observations. The propositions of philosophy are not
intended to be predictive statements about experimental outcomes, which is why
the original poster did not see how philosophy contributes to science.

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001sky
This Standford page is a helpful online resource, for many topics in history
of phil. eg

<http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/>

~~~
wfn
SEP is helpful in many matters philosophy-related: I find that the articles
are usually a very sound combination of historical as well as problem-oriented
perspectives with references to contemporary / recent research. The SEP is
generally well-regarded in academic circles, AFAIK.

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ekm2
What exactly is the best way to learn philosophy?Would reading the classics be
better than say,studying this particular resource?

~~~
FarhadG
It really depends on what you want to learn. As you know, with the diversity
of philosophy (language, science, law, art, mind, etc.), there are many
different types of educational roadmaps.

What are you wanting to learn?

~~~
ekm2
I just need a general understanding of the field

~~~
anythinggoes
I find it difficult to get a general understanding of Philosophy as this
discipline tends to be so big that it is difficult to get a good overview.

What I would suggest is asking yourself what kind of questions you find
interesting. Do you like Politics and have arguments with libertarians,
nationalists etc? Maybe you want to read more about that, reading both
contemporary authors as well as classic ones such as Rousseau or Mill. Are you
more interested in questions that are linked to science? Go read about authors
such as Daniel Dennett, Searle or David Chalmers to find out more about
questions e.g. "what is consciousness? How does this relate to AI?" and many
other topics.

After a while you will know more names of authors and you will increase your
network immensely.

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FarhadG
Surprised to see many of your are into philosophy--that's pretty awesome!

@Biofox: Thanks for that link. I'm gonna be checking that out in detail.

