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Does Philosophy Have a Role in Computer Science?
Johannes Climacus asks: "It would seem to me that philosophical works of philosophers such as Aristotle, Leibniz, Frege, Russell, and Tarski could play a central role in a Computer Science curriculum, as they form a mathematical basis of modern CS and Math. Ethicists such as Plato, Kant, Hegel, Mill, and Heidegger might also play a normative role in Computer Ethics and technology in general. However, I haven't seen any philosophical discussion in any of my theoretical computer science courses besides some simple logic. Is it the same elsewhere? How often do philosophical concerns play into Computer Science education as a whole? What role does (or could) philosophy have in Computer Science or Information Technology?"
Alan Turing devised most of the theoretical basis for computers in mathematics, but all the modern computers that we use are called Von Neumann machines for a reason.
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
He said that before the days of computer science degrees, there were two disciplines that were sought after when it came to finding programmers.
#2 was mathematicians.
#1 was philosophers.
Enough said.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I think the comments here are very interesting. One common theme seems to be the importance of ethics in, for example, determining the normative quality of our technological advancements. Such thinking is certainly important, but I don't really consider it deeply philosophical -- philosophers of ethics are often actually studying meta-ethics (the study of the practice of making normative judgements, or of what normative -- i.e. good and bad -- judgements might mean) and when they're not they are far more often studying the general principles behind good and bad judgements (does good mean creating the most pleasure?)) rather than applying rules to determine the goodness or badness of any particular situation.
Of course, other parts of philosophy (besides ethics) have been cited here -- logic is one of the obvious ones of course: as a Philosophy major interviewing at Microsoft I was frequently asked what Philosophy had to do with Computer Science and I cited philosophical logic and how Russell's logical discoveries are the basis of NAND gate chip design. But I'm also interested in the application of epistemology to AI (the cognitive science side in particular).
But I think the connection between philosophy and computer science ought to be made more generally than attempting to apply specific philosophical results to problems of computation. (I certainly don't deny that such application can and should be done -- and the McCarthy quote cited above suggests several promising lines -- but I think it should not be the only focus for philosophy's use in computer science.) My view of it (as a philosophy major about to start a job in software development) is that the methods of philosophy rather than the results will be useful to me in computer science. Much of philosophy, the actual practice of making arguments, explaining phenomena, drawing conclusions is I think very similar to computer science, which I frequently see as just the abstract description of a problem.
An example: sorting algorithms aren't just practical ways to achieve a goal, the algorithms are descriptions of what it is to sort something: sorting requires a certain number of comparisons, which it can be shown is on the order of n log n. That seems to me an instance of philosophy -- taking a phenomenon, investigating what it means abstractly and precisely. And I think (and hope) that much of real-world software development (not just the deep theory around algorithms) is the same sort of thing -- a precise and abstract description of a problem: from determining requirements from the user to writing the code for particular algorithms. Software developers may not be keeping copies of Plato or Russell on their desks for regular reference, but I think a philosophy background is a great help.
Philosophy is mindless crap if you maintain the conviction that it has some intrinsic relevance in the real world.
Now, if you lack that, then philosophy is fascinating, critical to civilization and often very useful, particularly if combined with a requirement for observation -- ie science.