Related papers: |{Math, Philosophy, Programming, Writing}| = 1
I discuss some problems related to extreme mathematical realism, focusing on a recently proposed "shut-up-and-calculate" approach to physics (arXiv:0704.0646, arXiv:0709.4024). I offer arguments for a moderate alternative, the essence of…
This is a short (and personal) introduction in German to the connections between artificial intelligence, philosophy, and logic, and to the author's work. Dies ist eine kurze (und persoenliche) Einfuehrung in die Zusammenhaenge zwischen…
Esoteric programming languages are challenging to learn, but their unusual features and constraints may serve to improve programming ability. From languages designed to be intentionally obtuse (e.g. INTERCAL) to others targeting artistic…
Objects are a centerpiece of the mathematical realm and our interaction with and reasoning about it, just as they are of the physical one (if not more). And humans' mathematical reasoning must ultimately be grounded in our general…
What does it mean to claim that a physical or natural system computes? One answer, endorsed here, is that computing is about programming a system to behave in different ways. This paper offers an account of what it means for a physical…
Natural language processing for programming aims to use NLP techniques to assist programming. It is increasingly prevalent for its effectiveness in improving productivity. Distinct from natural language, a programming language is highly…
Social psychology researchers have, traditionally, focused on the construct of thinking rather than on feeling. Since the beginning of the 21st century, social science researchers have, however, increasingly explored the effects of affect.…
We report on a pedagogical experiment to make mathematics easy by changing its philosophy. The Western philosophy of math originated in religious beliefs about mathesis, cursed by the church. Later, mathematics was "reinterpreted", in a…
Despite its apparent complexity, our world seems to be governed by simple laws of physics. This volume provides a philosophical introduction to such laws. I explain how they are connected to some of the central issues in philosophy, such as…
Cognitive diversity, reflected in variations of language, perspective, and reasoning, is essential to creativity and collective intelligence. This diversity is rich and grounded in culture, history, and individual experience. Yet as large…
This article looks at philosophical aspects and questions that modern astrophysical research gives rise to. Other than cosmology, astrophysics particularly deals with understanding phenomena and processes operating at "intermediate" cosmic…
One finding of cognitive research is that people do not automatically acquire usable knowledge by spending lots of time on task. Because students' knowledge hierarchy is more fragmented, "knowledge chunks" are smaller than those of experts.…
At time of writing, large language models (LLMs) are beginning to obtain the ability to design, execute, write up, and referee scientific projects on the data-science side of astrophysics. What implications does this have for our…
Can machines truly think? This question and its answer have many implications that depend, in large part, on any number of assumptions underlying how the issue has been addressed or considered previously. A crucial question, and one that is…
We report on the idea to use colours to distinguish syntax and semantics as an educational tool in logic classes. This distinction gives also reason to reflect on some philosophical issues concerning semantics.
Logic has pride of place in mathematics and its 20th century offshoot, computer science. Modern symbolic logic was developed, in part, as a way to provide a formal framework for mathematics: Frege, Peano, Whitehead and Russell, as well as…
The mainstream view of meaning is that it is emergent, not fundamental, but some have disputed this, asserting that there is a more fundamental level of reality than that addressed by current physical theories, and that matter and meaning…
Learning physics is a context dependent process. I consider a broader interdisciplinary problem of where differences in understanding and reasoning arise. I suggest the long run effects a multiple choice based learning system as well as…
We have a lot of relation to the encoding and the Theory of Information, when considering thinking. This is a natural process and, at once, the complex thing we investigate. This always was a challenge - to understand how our mind works,…
What is reasoning? This question has driven centuries of philosophical inquiry, from Aristotle's syllogisms to modern computational complexity theory. In the age of large language models achieving superhuman performance on benchmarks like…