Philosophy and Computer Science Revisited

Soren Kierkegaard writes "While reading the two-and-a-half-year-old Slashdot post on Does Philosophy have a role in Computer Science, it occurred to me that over these past few years Philosophy has a more prominent role in Computer Science then ever before. Cognitive Science and Computer Ethics are more established disciplines in universities, and the numbers of philosophy graduates double majoring in computer science and information systems are climbing. Is a merger of Philosophy, a discipline steeped in history and intelligent thought, and Computer Science, a discipline that looks to the future, the best of both worlds?"

Comments

Logic is programming

[mschuyler]

Actually, a course in the philosophy department on logic got me into computers. Years later I took a programming course and discovered it was the same thing as symbolic logic, mostly. The rest is history. It made my career. :-)

I did it.

[Prien715]

I'm almost 5 years out of school now and got degrees in both CS and Philosophy. In my humble opinion, there's a lot of intersection between the two, especially in regard to philosophy of the mind, but the really interesting part, I think, is how it helps me in my day to day work.

No, I'm not discussing the Critique of Pure Reason, espousing empiricism, or wondering if I really am just dreaming.

What I learned from my other major was discursive thinking: dissecting an idea to see what it means and what its ramifications are and how to deal with having more than one way to do it (TM) by choosing the best one.

Philosophy, for me, was all about discussion, so I'd had years of practice putting ideas up on the white board, understanding them, and maybe shooting them down years before I ever joined my first programming team.

(That, and being able to write incomprehensible comments vis a vis the English challenged folk with whom I sometimes work;))