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The Philosophy of Computer Science

plato.stanford.edu

11–20 of 51 posts

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#11
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

There are interesting things here to think about, and I think in practice a lot of discussions folks have in building software is philosophical. Another approach: What is/are the type(s) of argument that would convince you that something is useful? We could see if there is such an argument.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#12
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Sure: It's designed, like any qualitative model, to yield leverage. Know the laws, understand the principles, and soon you can pull off something amazing. Maybe it guides you into a career path within the broad field of CS, or perhaps you use the principles as metaphor-templates for your personal CS education. "In what way could this Hello World program be described as a mathematical object? Is it an axiomatic theory…

Aren’t names always referential, in the sense of refering to a meaning or in the abstract, some memory or experience, or even future experiences, that an interpreter has/is/will have? So is the issue you point out that the names are heavily loaded and proper nouns? And how is that at the cost of information transfer (one might argue it transfers more information since you are sending “heavy words” which decompress to a lot of content under a “lookup”)?

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#13
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure: It's designed, like any qualitative model, to yield leverage. Know the laws, understand the principles, and soon you can pull off something amazing. Maybe it guides you into a career path within the broad field of CS, or perhaps you use the principles as metaphor-templates for your personal CS education. "In what way could this Hello World program be described as a mathematical object? Is it an axiomatic theory…

Aren’t names always referential, in the sense of refering to a meaning or in the abstract, some memory or experience, or even future experiences, that an interpreter has/is/will have? So is the issue you point out that the names are heavily loaded and proper nouns? And how is that at the cost of information transfer (one might argue it transfers more information since you are sending “heavy words” which decompress to…

> direct information transfer

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#14
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#15
post #14
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world. I also think that, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, OO patterns make some kind of sense - since they allow us to clarify problems as being subsets of more general ones.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#16
post #14
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Should people work on OpenSource at all after reading Niccolò Machiavelli?

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#17
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Sure: It's designed, like any qualitative model, to yield leverage. Know the laws, understand the principles, and soon you can pull off something amazing. Maybe it guides you into a career path within the broad field of CS, or perhaps you use the principles as metaphor-templates for your personal CS education. "In what way could this Hello World program be described as a mathematical object? Is it an axiomatic theory…

That's the style used throughout the whole Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. My guess is that style is used because it originates from and serves the academic community, where references are the norm.

I agree it'd be cool to see the other version of this too.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#18
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

Can you expand on this? To me, Plato seems like a fairly good fit for the computer world. I also think that, from the perspective of analytic philosophy, OO patterns make some kind of sense - since they allow us to clarify problems as being subsets of more general ones.

I'm sure that most people who have studied OO would find many similarities with Plato's forms. The same could be said of Spinoza's attributes, however the latter is much more abstract (to say the least).

Without digressing too much from the topic however, I think OO has it's place. Sometimes it's rather like constructing scaffolding prior to building a small dog house, unnecessarily complex.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#19
post #14
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

Absolutely, because it keeps you from wasting time. Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy and unfortunately very few people realize this. For example, if more people knew about the shortcomings of Platonism, we wouldn't be wasting time on idiotic fads like OO patterns.

> Computer programming is applied analytic philosophy

A program may direct its attention to any sort of digitally represented piece of information–as computer science progresses the things that can be represented expand over time. What in the main analytic philosophers care about are philosophical concepts which are a subset of all knowledge. Therefore by this reckoning computer programming is not applied analytic philosophy.

You are also suggesting that there is some sort of pure/applied distinction within analytic philosophy. That's unorthodox. If there were such a distinction though you're suggesting that software engineering might be the way we take philosophical formalisms and apply them to the world. I think philosophers would argue that philosophy already does that.

Re: The Philosophy of Computer Science

#20
post #6

Honest question: is this useful?

I don't see why not. It's always a useful exercise to take a step back and see how things from different domains might connect up. It's also useful to understand how a discipline has evolved. Computing and information seem like very fundamental concepts now that we've stumbled upon them so it seems right and proper that we figure out how these things interface with all the other things we know about.

Incidentally I've seen Wadler suggest we call the field Informatics. I'd prefer that I think. The word science is doing too much work nowadays and computer science is only a science in the formal science kind of way, if that's even correct. It's definitely not a science in the way biology or chemistry are. By that reasoning I'd prefer the philosophy of informatics. Floridi has suggested the philosophy of computing and information but that's cumbersome. There's also philosophy of the digital which tries to cast its net the widest.

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