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The Philosophy of Computer Science (stanford.edu)
22 points by AdrianRossouw on April 20, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments


I was looking for articles to reference around the nature of logic in philosophy and programming, but this is far more interesting I think..

This contains various different ways of thinking about computer science, such as the nature of computation or abstraction.


Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) is an immensely useful resource with a great deal of authority behind it. I used it all the time in college and grad school to get a quick, general understanding of any new philosophical topic that I came across.

Just like Wikipedia, everything is properly cited and you will find all the primary sources in the Bibliography. Unlike Wikipedia, SEP is carefully curated by professionals, but I think it's an excellent example of professional curation done right. Despite the fact that most articles are written by people who are known to have strong opinions on the topics they write about, the articles themselves are generally neutral and contain pro and con arguments for various points of view. Because philosophical theories are often highly controversial and there aren't many concrete facts that everyone can agree on, Wikipedia's model is probably not appropriate here.

"Philosophy of Computer Science", however, is a relatively new addition to SEP, and the low maturity of the field is easily noticeable. Too many topics are squeezed into the same article (instead of being separated into their own articles), and despite the author's effort to include diverse sources, it's clear that not many people are making direct contributions to this field. But I expect this to get better over time. SEP articles are frequently updated, although not as often as Wikipedia. After a couple of major revisions, the article will probably look much better than it already is.

Since computer science is very closely related to various other topics in the logic and epistemology sections of SEP, I would also like to see more cross-references... But it seems that SEP editors are less enthusiastic about linking between articles than Wikipedia editors are. Most links are lumped together in the "Related Entries" section at the end. After all, these people are used to writing textbooks, not online encyclopedias.




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