Questions tagged [philosophy-of-computer-science]
86 questions
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Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
relatively new to philosophy.
This question is based on John Searle's Chinese Room Argument.
I find it odd that his main argument for why programs could not think was that because programs could only follow syntax rules but could not associate any…
Abraham
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How is the universe able to run physics so smoothly?
Motivated by the discussion on whether chemistry can be reduced to physics, I came across a similar thread on Reddit, where a user commented:
A lot of chemistry has been reduced to physics, in the sense that you can perform long, expensive quantum…
user80226
16
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12 answers
Do computers use logic?
I know we refer to computers as using logic, logic gates and the like, but is this just us ascribing human capacities to the machines? It sounds like a case of us giving more meaning to the machines than they deserve. I've read about things like…
adkane
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What do humans do uniquely, that computers apparently will not be able to?
The question is often brought of what computers will be able to do as well or better than humans. We could ask a more definitive question: what do humans do that we never expect computers to do, no matter how sophisticated?
I don't expect computers…
Scott Rowe
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What are some resources on the philosophy of computer science?
Are there any links between philosophy and computer science? What resources might be useful for a programmer learning philosophy?
Clippy
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11
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12 answers
Why do people believe a turing machine can be fully conscious?
In his book Consciousness Explained Dennett writes "Anyone or anything that has such a virtual machine as its control system is conscious in the fullest sense" [p281] referring to a Joycean machine which (if I understood correctly) may be…
nir
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Is there a "hard problem of aesthetics?"
As a society, we already spend a lot of time and energy predicting what somebody will find enjoyable; programmers and psychologists have spent decades honing recommendation algorithms to predict what somebody will enjoy watching.
What if we imagine…
user67129
10
votes
1 answer
Logic and Computation: a philosophical viewpoint on Curry-Howard isomorphism
The link between logic and computation is stronger than ever, especially since the establishment of the Curry-Howard isomorphism specifying that proofs can be seen as programs and formulas as program's types.
I wondered if we could find any texts…
Boris
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10
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Why are languages commonly structured as trees?
I could define a language as a collection of symbols or elements, with rules for putting them together.
When I say "putting them together", it sounds like there is only one way to do that. In other words, we don't have multiple kinds of…
Julius Hamilton
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Can LLMs have intention?
In many movies, you have seen an AI robot moving here and there, doing this and that with an intention. Is it possible that a generative AI-like language model (e.g., ChatGPT) could ever do that?
Suppose we look under the hood and examine the maths…
Shriman Keshri
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If Large Language Models can do Maths, is Formalism true?
A slightly flippant question, but curious to see what my platonist rivals might have to say!
One of the proported reasons that Open-AI was having business politics trouble was the suggestion that their newest Transformer-architecture driven…
Sofie Ross
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10
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Does the incomputability of Kolmogorov complexity imply that we will never have a final theory of everything?
The Kolmogorov Complexity is the size of the simplest program that produces a specific output. By the Curry-Howard Correspondence, "programs" are isomorphic to "axiomatic systems" and "outputs" are isomorphic to "entailments". Since the size of the…
charmoniumQ
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9
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What is the philosophical meaning of the Curry-Howard correspondence?
In 1934 Curry observes that the types of the combinators could be
seen as axiom-schemes for intuitionistic implicational logic.
In 1958 he observes that a certain kind of proof system, referred to as Hilbert-style deduction systems, coincides on…
provocateur
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9
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How is AI changing our view of consciousness?
Consciousness doesn't reveal itself except through behaviour. We can't see others' minds, but we can hear their voice and what they say. This leads the observer to conclude that their interlocutor has a mind which has consciousness. We can't…
Stas Medvedev
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8
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Is there any philosophical theory behind the concept of object in computer science?
From - Object (computer science) - Wikipedia:
A language is usually considered object-based if it includes the basic capabilities for an object: identity, properties, and attributes. A language is considered object-oriented if it is object-based…
Ooker
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