The Philosophical Programmer

In one of the most unorthodox yet necessary programming books ever to appear, Daniel Kohanski, a seasoned programmer and systems consultant, delves into the foundational concepts and basic mechanics of computers and computer programming. Rather than writing yet another book that teaches readers how to write code, Kohanski penetrates more deeply into the nature of programming istelf. By exploring what programming is all about, The Philosophical Programmer: Reflections on the Moth in the Machine offers an introduction for the computer neophyte as well as an opportunity for experienced programmers to understand better the fundamental nature of their craft.

This book presents a historical and philosophical analysis of programming systems, intended as large computational systems like, for instance, operating systems, programmed to control processes. The introduction to the volume emphasizes the contemporary need of providing a foundational analysis of such systems, rooted in a broader historical and philosophical discussion. The different chapters are grouped around three major themes. The first concerns the early history of large systems developed against the background of issues related to the growing semantic gap between hardware and code. The second revisits the fundamental issue of complexity of large systems, dealt with by the use of formal methods and the development of `grand designs’ like Unix. Finally, a third part considers several issues related to programming systems in the real world, including chapters on aesthetical, ethical and political issues. This book will interest researchers from a diversity of backgrounds. It will appeal to historians, philosophers, as well as logicians and computer scientists who want to engage with topics relevant to the history and philosophy of programming and more specifically the role of programming systems in the foundations of computing.

Colburn (computer science, U. of Minnesota-Duluth) has a doctorate in philosophy and an advanced degree in computer science; he's worked as a philosophy professor, a computer programmer, and a research scientist in artificial intelligence. Here he discusses the philosophical foundations of artificial intelligence; the new encounter of science and philosophy (logic, models of the mind and of reasoning, epistemology); and the philosophy of computer science (touching on math, abstraction, software, and ontology).

Programming the World with Philosophy is a book that encourages the masses to expropriate philosophy from academia, because with philosophy, especially postmodern minimalist philosophy, a world-class education for each member of the masses is within reach. See http: //philophysics.com.

This book is a critical introduction to code and software that develops an understanding of its social and philosophical implications in the digital age. Written specifically for people interested in the subject from a non-technical background, the book provides a lively and interesting analysis of these new media forms.

Can humans and artificial intelligences share concepts and communicate? One aim of Making AI Intelligible is to show that philosophical work on the metaphysics of meaning can help answer these questions. Cappelen and Dever use the externalist tradition in philosophy of to create models of how AIs and humans can understand each other. In doing so, they also show ways in which that philosophical tradition can be improved: our linguistic encounters with AIs revel that our theories of meaning have been excessively anthropocentric. The questions addressed in the book are not only theoretically interesting, but the answers have pressing practical implications. Many important decisions about human life are now influenced by AI. In giving that power to AI, we presuppose that AIs can track features of the world that we care about (e.g. creditworthiness, recidivism, cancer, and combatants.) If AIs can share our concepts, that will go some way towards justifying this reliance on AI. The book can be read as a proposal for how to take some first steps towards achieving interpretable AI. Making AI Intelligible is of interest to both philosophers of language and anyone who follows current events or interacts with AI systems. It illustrates how philosophy can help us understand and improve our interactions with AI.

Ricorso and Revelation traces the impact on Modernism of the archaeological discoveries of the Palace of Knossos, the Royal Cemetery of Ur, and the Tomb of Tutankhamen, and the artifacts recovered from these sites, showing how they entered the narrative strategies of the Modernist movement. The author also develops a new argument about the four myth configurations — the maze, alchemy, the Great Goddess, and the Apocalypse — which were of central importance to the literature of European Modernism between 1895 and 1946, studying their appearances in a wide range of European modernist writers and in the paintings of Picasso and the films of Jean Cocteau. Drawing from a variety of theories on myth, Smith suggests that each of these four myths represents a creative return to the origins (ricorso), a reduction of the raw materials of daily life to the fundamental elements of creation (revelation), followed by a recreation of the world (cosmogenesis), of the poet (ontogenesis), and of the text (poesis).