Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy • Hacker News Board

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#171

Post by khafra » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 2:19 PM UTC

mayank wrote: post #118

jaxn wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a philosophy major and my take was always that "philosophy is the study of things science hasn't yet solved". Yes, it butts up to science and when you tread over the line that helps you either prove or disprove that part of the theory. It is like a financial model for a startup. In the beginning you guess at what your revenue and expenses are. Then you learn some facts (my rent is $xxxx/mo and I currently have…

I always imagined philosophy as the study of things beyond the realm of science. By saying that its the study of things science hasn't yet solved, you're saying that philosophy is speculation about things that science will possibly solve, but speculation without taking science to date into account, and without empiricism. That just sounds like bad science. Am I misunderstanding your point? In fact, your last three li…

"Hasn't yet figured out how to tackle" is better than "hasn't yet solved." Philosophy figures out what kind of question to ask, which then spawns a field of science which starts methodically asking and answering them.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#172

Post by samd » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 2:34 PM UTC

gwern wrote: post #92

samd wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mileage did vary. Nobody in modern academic philosophy is a dualist. Facts are nice, but philosophical debates tend to be about things that are fundamentally unprovable, unobservable, etc. I think a lot of people that come from the sciences and other "hard" disciplines are frustrated by how useless their facts are in solving these debates. As someone with degrees in both a hard science and philosophy I'd say that…

> 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

Let's go with: nobody's a Cartesian dualist.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#173

Post by marchdown » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 3:00 PM UTC

eavc wrote: post #68

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.

Generally I agree with your critique of this approach to a subject, but I think philosophy is an exceptional case, more like a hybrid of mathematics and literature than something like physics. If philosophy was taught the same way physics is, it would be utterly intractable. Unlike physics, philosophy has little in the way of settled canon. There are precious few bits of established gained ground when it comes to the…

I don't quite see how you could practice critical thinking while not gaining any solid ground. Are philosophical truths to unattainable, so eternally receding? How do you know that your way of arguing has any benefits if you can't get closer to truth with it?

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#174

Post by ragnar » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 3:39 PM UTC

igravious wrote: post #78

chrisaycock wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham wrote an essay a few years ago about his very frustration with this: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

As someone with a degree in philosophy and mathematics but who has earned his bread & butter doing QA, coding, network and sys admin I feel that I have a lot of inside knowledge that I can bring to this debate. I could fill an essay myself in response to Paul's post but I'll keep it brief so as not to bore anyone. This: "Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other universi…

I would argue that mathematics itself does not have a subject matter. It started with counting and geometry, then became applied to physics, and slowly developed applications to probability, then computing. It seems to me that if we can reason in a rigorous and general way about any subject, the study of that reasoning is a discipline within mathematics. Philosophy, on the other hand, seems to me to in fact have a subject matter, or rather many subjects. Philosophical conversations always center on something, be it the existence of abstract ideas or the foundation of moral choices. (If you think that having a multitude of subjects constitutes having no subject, then one might make the same charge that science has no subject since it investigates sounds as well as heat flow, as well as cancer...) What I think separates philosophy from other disciplines is not the kinds of subjects it investigates, but the kinds of answers to them that it seeks: completely precise, general, and unquestionably true.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#175

Post by genegene » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 4:55 PM UTC

eavc wrote: post #86

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,…

I participated in high-level interdisciplinary courses in philosophy and science and philosophy and mathematics. While I grant everything you've said, the lack of rigor cuts both ways. In my experience, many if not most who come from the non-philosophy discipline arrive with little to no respect for the philosophy half of the course. They enter with the popular conception of philosophy as something vague and contempl…

Its ironic that duality was given as an example of how phillosophy is irrelevant to AI. Logic/Mathematics are both dichotomized ontologies of opposotes. Nothing could be more relevant.

How about oop which is modeled after plato's ontology of forms? Processes/Objects, this line of inquiry nor the language originated from cs.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#176

Post by genegene » Fri, Jan 28, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

genegene wrote: post #175

eavc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I participated in high-level interdisciplinary courses in philosophy and science and philosophy and mathematics. While I grant everything you've said, the lack of rigor cuts both ways. In my experience, many if not most who come from the non-philosophy discipline arrive with little to no respect for the philosophy half of the course. They enter with the popular conception of philosophy as something vague and contempl…

Its ironic that duality was given as an example of how phillosophy is irrelevant to AI. Logic/Mathematics are both dichotomized ontologies of opposotes. Nothing could be more relevant. How about oop which is modeled after plato's ontology of forms? Processes/Objects, this line of inquiry nor the language originated from cs.

Continuation...

Philosophy is relevant to CS. The challenge is contextualizing the domain in a relevant way.

Re: Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

#177

Post by eavc » Sat, Feb 05, 2011, 12:30 AM UTC

marchdown wrote: post #173

eavc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally I agree with your critique of this approach to a subject, but I think philosophy is an exceptional case, more like a hybrid of mathematics and literature than something like physics. If philosophy was taught the same way physics is, it would be utterly intractable. Unlike physics, philosophy has little in the way of settled canon. There are precious few bits of established gained ground when it comes to the…

I don't quite see how you could practice critical thinking while not gaining any solid ground. Are philosophical truths to unattainable, so eternally receding? How do you know that your way of arguing has any benefits if you can't get closer to truth with it?

Solid ground was gained rapidly up until philosophy had sired all the major disciplines. What remains are the most ethereal and intractable problems, and while certain possibilities have been ruled out and others have gained popularity, they are not the sort of thing that regularly admits to being outright solidified.