The lecturer of this course will be Prof. Christiane Floyd.

The objectives are

• to characterize modern science as a specific way of human knowing,

• to present philosophical positions on human knowing,

• to sketch the emergence and mainstream discussion in philosophy of science,

• to introduce key critical schools of thought,

• to locate and reflect on computing within the scientific landscape.

The term "computing" is used here as an encompassing notion. It refers to academic disciplines like "informatics", "computer science", and so on, whose names and definitions vary from one country to another. It also denotes the practice of developing computational artifacts at the levels of hardware and software in both research and application.

Three aspects of computing are of particular interest:

• Computational intelligence: the computer as agent,

• Developing computational artifacts: the practice of programming,

• Using computational artifacts: IT systems in human contexts.

The lecturer of this course will be Prof. Christiane Floyd.

In this course, students should acquire an understanding for basic issues in philosophy of science and become aware how they relate to the computing field. In view of the heterogeneous background of the candidates, no assumptions on previous education in philosophy are made.

This is a Fundamental PhD Course of the Faculty of Informatics for doctoral and master students. 

Doctoral students in Computer Science have admission priority to this course.

Schedule: The course will start on Oct 16, 2018 and will meet each Tuesday from 16:00 s.t. -18:00.

 Further information is available under section "literature" (see course material).

Seminar papers

The topics of the seminar papers will be decided in an individual session at the end of the course. For the seminar paper you will have to read more background literature and relate computing issues in your field of work to philosophy of science.
Typically you will either choose one school of thought and relate it to your research topic, or reflect on the epistemological ontological and axiological questions involved in your dissertation research.

The seminar papers will be written after the course.

Assignments

To successfully pass the course, students have to

1. submit a position paper on philosophical questions related to their dissertation
2. participate in the classroom discussion on these philosophical questions
3. alone or cooperating in pairs, give a presentation, lead a discussion, and write a short paper on an article relating computing problems to philosophical positions in one of the lectures,
4. write a seminar paper on philosophical questions related to their dissertation, based on assignments 1 and 3 and referring to at least one philosophical school.

Assignments 1 to 3 will not be graded.

Grades will be based on the seminar papers.

Please register in TISS.