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Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

comlab.ox.ac.uk

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Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#131

Post by jscn »

wazoox wrote: post #121
mayank wrote: post #17

Caveat: this is an anecdote, and your mileage may vary, but I think it illustrates a point of contention in the "two cultures". As a computer science major in the US, I once took a "philosophy of mind" course out of a genuine multi-faceted interest in AI. I was working on undergraduate machine learning research at the time, so I used to pore over the green Norvig/Stewart AI book like a religious text. Unfortunately,…

Some great computer scientists and AI pioneers, for instance Terry Winograd, turned to philosophy to look for solutions to some untractable technical problems. Some philosophers like Bertrand Russell initiated some of the deepest scientific questions. And it's still philosophy (in the figure of Karl Popper) that defined what makes science. Philosophy is the meta-science par excellence. Apparently you had some bad luc…

I sympathise with your position that philosophy is a kind of meta-science, with the caveat that that is only one kind of philosophy. But Karl Popper did not define what science is. That's an ongoing question (and one to which I think there is no single answer.)

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#132

Post by Confusion »

scott_s wrote: post #31
mayank wrote: post #17

Caveat: this is an anecdote, and your mileage may vary, but I think it illustrates a point of contention in the "two cultures". As a computer science major in the US, I once took a "philosophy of mind" course out of a genuine multi-faceted interest in AI. I was working on undergraduate machine learning research at the time, so I used to pore over the green Norvig/Stewart AI book like a religious text. Unfortunately,…

If physics was taught the same way philosophy is, we'd learn about the four elements before getting to Newtonian mechanics.

I'd argue that physics is being taught the way philosophy is. It's just that with physics, there's clear evidence that previous approaches fell short and there is no need to dwell on them for a long time. However, in introductory classes, you still go into the reasons that previous approaches were wrong. Why do we need to postulate such things as atoms? Knowing why advances were needed makes it much clearer why the current approach is right.

In philosophy, you need to go through all the motions to understand exactly where and why previous approaches fall short. You need to be able to reproduce the exact lines of reasoning, because you need them over and over again. Old paradigms are revisited over and over again. After thoroughly understanding why duality falls short, you discover that there are actually ways to save it. But you have to be very careful not to fall into one of the traps of reasoning that made you reject it previously. A thing like Platonism isn't dead, but any current Platonist has to be very refined in order to keep his philosophy credible.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#133

Post by haliax »

chrisaycock wrote: post #11
pauldoerwald wrote: post #2

I recently completed my M.Sc in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford (Soft Eng is closely affiliated with ComLab, but is a slightly separate department) and I can only speak well of the program, its lecturers, and its resources. This looks like a great program; if I were 18 again I might consider going to Oxford for this undergrad degree.

There are several Oxonians on HN from the looks of it. I read for my DPhil in Computing, as did @cperciva.

Which College were you at? I went to New!

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#134

Post by quinndupont »

How many people on Hacker News have actually studied philosophy? Judging by the top-ranked comments it seems like a) few have studied philosophy seriously, and b) few seem to think there is much value in philosophy.

(And by "seriously", I mean beyond a passing understanding of philosophy of mind. If you haven't read the better part of the canon, including boring folk such as Kant or Descartes, that isn't being serious)

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#135

Post by jscn »

scotty79 wrote: post #55

Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about.

Philosophy is a necessary condition for science (which I take it is the process you have in mind for 'actually discover[ing] something').

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#136

Post by krakensden »

Confusion wrote: post #132
scott_s wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If physics was taught the same way philosophy is, we'd learn about the four elements before getting to Newtonian mechanics.

I'd argue that physics is being taught the way philosophy is. It's just that with physics, there's clear evidence that previous approaches fell short and there is no need to dwell on them for a long time. However, in introductory classes, you still go into the reasons that previous approaches were wrong. Why do we need to postulate such things as atoms? Knowing why advances were needed makes it much clearer why the c…

I think there's a real difference between teaching wrong-but-very-useful things like Newtonian mechanics and teaching wrong-and-not-at-all-useful things like the four elements.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#137

Post by gwern »

randallsquared wrote: post #122
gwern wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mileage did vary. Nobody in modern academic philosophy is a dualist. That may not be as true as you think. Notice the high percentages of internalism, libertarianism, and other positions associated with dualism. (Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask flat out about dualism): http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

Note that "libertarianism" here refers to an argument about free will, not political libertarianism.

? I know perfectly well what libertarianism refers to here, that's why I mentioned it in the context of a philosophy of mind discussion.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#138

Post by Alex3917 »

igravious wrote: post #127
Alex3917 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is that people are using the results of a field to justify its axioms. For example, all of science rests on the assumptions that the world is as it appears (empiricism), there are no supernatural forces, etc. Why do most people buy into these beliefs so strongly even though there is zero evidence for them? The basic reasoning is that empiricism must be correct because we have iPods, therefore 'science' (scie…

The idea is that people are using the results of a field to justify its axioms. Interesting observation. You can see why it comes about though. It's not like people are going out of there way to be dumb :) They are fed a bunch of triumphalism too. And people are easily misled. Once science starts providing a lot of answers about the universe and also once it starts giving us comforts and toys it's hard not to extrapo…

"Don't forget how hostile religion was to individual atheists."

That's one of the reasons why I support the movement, but that doesn't make it correct. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with atheism. That being said, I think Dawkins is kind of dumb, and unfortunately he's the face of the modern movement and the one that everyone cites.

"How do you think the modernist project crashed and burned?"

The eugenics movement and the holocaust.

"Are you a postmodernist?"

I haven't read enough postmodernist lit to feel comfortable putting myself in that camp, though certainly many of my critiques of modernity are along the same lines.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#139

Post by gwern »

mbateman wrote: post #129
gwern wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My mileage did vary. Nobody in modern academic philosophy is a dualist. That may not be as true as you think. Notice the high percentages of internalism, libertarianism, and other positions associated with dualism. (Unfortunately, the survey didn't ask flat out about dualism): http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl

Mind: physicalism or non-physicalism? Accept or lean toward: physicalism 526 / 931 (56.4%) Accept or lean toward: non-physicalism 252 / 931 (27%) Other 153 / 931 (16.4%) Not sure how you can pick "other" from those options, but there you have it. (Physicalism implies non-dualism. Non-physicalism does not imply dualism.)

> Physicalism implies non-dualism. Non-physicalism does not imply dualism.

Since they didn't ask about dualism directly, nor, as far as I can tell, any position that logically entails dualism, obviously there is no deductive implication here.

I'm making a probabilistic point - non-physicalism is heavily represented (more than a quarter) among the group Samd specified, and thus there are pretty good odds that at least one academic philosopher espouses the specific non-physicalist theory of dualism.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#140

Post by jscn »

rdouble wrote: post #19

I did a math and philosophy double major. The danger of a degree like this is that the stark reality of a programming job will seem unbearably boring in comparison to what you studied in school.

Yeah, I must say that programming web apps and battling with CSS is pretty dull after studying philosophy.
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