12 ms·

Oxford announces new degree in Computer Science and Philosophy

223 points by chrisaycock 16y ago

pauldoerwald 16y ago
I recently completed my M.Sc in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford (Soft Eng is closely affiliated with ComLab, but is a slightly separate department) and I can only speak well of the program, its lecturers, and its resources. This looks like a great program; if I were 18 again I might consider going to Oxford for this undergrad degree.
- arethuza 16y ago
  I was accepted to do AI and Linguistics at Edinburgh but went off to do a "straight" CS degree elsewhere - I often wish I'd done that rather than the more mainstream degree.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  There are several Oxonians on HN from the looks of it. I read for my DPhil in Computing, as did @cperciva.
  - pauldoerwald 16y ago
    When did you finish your degree? Perhaps we were there at the same time? Although I was in a part-time program, so it's more likely that you know my TAs :-P.
    - chrisaycock 16y ago
      I left early in 2005; my supervisor wanted to return to his native Australia, so I went with him as a "visiting fellow".
  - swombat 16y ago
    There certainly are. The Oxbridge mafia is everywhere shifty eyes. I'm pretty sure there's at least a few dozen moderately active HN users from Oxford (I'm one).
    - jedc 16y ago
      And there are a number of Cambridge grads here, too. (And quite a few that are YC founders!)
  - Emore 16y ago
    Come by during the open days for the Computer Science & Philosophy programme. Chances are I'll be arranging puzzle-hunts. Edit: realised you're probably not here anymore.
    - chrisaycock 16y ago
      I went back for Alumni Weekend in September. I didn't stop by ComLab since I was busy with the port collection at Christ Church. :D
      - Emore 16y ago
        Well, I can't blame you for that ;)
  - haliax 16y ago
    Which College were you at? I went to New!
    - chrisaycock 16y ago
      Christ Church
boredguy8 16y ago
How does an American get in to a program like this? Especially if, say hypothetically, they dropped out of school to work.
- zachrose 16y ago
  Apply?
  - boredguy8 16y ago
    That's like answering, "How do I write a good book?" with "Start typing." Applying isn't the same thing as "getting in"--it's one small part. Where do you apply to? What matters in the application? Do you apply under the course or do you apply generically? Are "A-levels" a thing that matters? What are people looking for in applicants, or how do you find out?
    - geoffw8 16y ago
      Can't answer all your questions, but as a brit thats been on the brink of applying, I know that all applications go through a system called Ucas (http://www.ucas.ac.uk/ http://www.ucas.ac.uk/). I'm not sure if what we call 'Oxbridge', the big 2 (Oxford & Cambridge) handle their own applications, but I'm pretty sure Ucas is the place you need to start. I know it works (at least for UK students) on a points system, where you get points per course, and the amount is set by the grades you get. Things are different if your a 'mature' student, and if you have 'life experience'. Best thing to do is get in touch, and write a very compelling 'personal statement'. The latter being the first step to application. I'm sure theres a few guys here who can give you more (oxbridge) related advice.
      - ElliotH 16y ago
        I've gone through UCAS recently. 'UCAS Points' are only really counted for the lower-end of universities. Any university anywhere near Oxbridge in terms of reputation or entrance requirements gives offers based on A Level or International Baccalaureate or other qualifications, often followed by an interview. For example my first and second choice universities offered AAA and AAB respectively.
quanticle 16y ago
How is this different from majoring in computer science and minoring in philosophy?
- ElliotH 16y ago
  UK Universities don't have 'Majors' and 'Minors' you just do your degree course.
- arethuza 16y ago
  Well, I'm from the UK and I've never really understood the "majoring" "minoring" thing (let alone GPAs).
- lukeschlather 16y ago
  A major/minor does not require you to integrate the two disciplines. Presumably at least this degree will require some synthesis. At my alma mater we didn't have minors at all, only "concentrations" and concentrations were required to be interdisciplinary. Of course St. Olaf is a specific American school, I may be overgeneralizing to Oxford.
- sid0 16y ago
  It seems like it has a roughly 50-50 CS/philosophy focus. While I'm majoring in CS, I'm also a philosophy minor in all but name (my university doesn't offer minors), and I really would have liked more philosophy in the mix.
- Swannie 16y ago
  This is approximately a "double major". For those in the UK unaware, "X and Y" suggests an approximate 50:50 split. "X with Y" suggests a heavy emphasis on X, more of a 75:25 split. And as others have pointed out, in the UK, apart from in some specific degrees (Cambridge Science Tripos springs to mind), the idea of completing a degree out of mainly self-selected units is a bit crazy.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - 16y ago
rdouble 16y ago
I did a math and philosophy double major. The danger of a degree like this is that the stark reality of a programming job will seem unbearably boring in comparison to what you studied in school.
- etherealG 16y ago
  I would say you have the wrong type of programming job then. Some can be massively creative and require "philosophical" thought. Areas that come to mind are the ones in computer science which bleed over naturally into philosophy, e.g. AI.
  - nervechannel 16y ago
    Yes, and graduates with an interdisciplinary background and strong reasoning skills are more likely to get the interesting jobs than pure software engineers who know JUnit inside-out. (Generalizing from myself with a sample size of one)
  - rdouble 16y ago
    I'm not sure the philosophy/AI crossover in the 1980s and 90s was all that useful. Things may have improved, but I doubt it. You're better off studying applied statistics if you want to get into AI. Even Wittgenstein told his students that studying philosophy is a waste of time and they should become car mechanics, instead. "If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life." --Steve Martin
- jscn 16y ago
  Yeah, I must say that programming web apps and battling with CSS is pretty dull after studying philosophy.
  - adrianN 16y ago
    It's pretty dull even before studying philosophy.
michaelleland 16y ago
Strongly reminiscent of John Galt's (and his friends') degrees in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand--they studied physics and philosophy together. Then then changed the world.
DanielBMarkham 16y ago
These two fields have been begging to merge for several years now. Great to see it happening. I'd like to see extended to a post-grad program. You could choose either business coding or academic coding. Both are rich areas for combining these two disciplines. Philosophy gives CS a broader, more conceptual view of how things fit together, and CS gives philosophy something useful to do -- it provides a hard edge from which to judge whether one philosophical stance is more or less useful in a given situation.
- _delirium 16y ago
  You can manage to do something like that as a CS PhD if you have the right advisor, though it's harder to pull off than it used to be as CS has gotten much more obsessed about being a rigorous science. It especially used to be the case in AI, and in some corners still is, that a good thesis makes conceptual and philosophical advances in analyzing problems and domains (or proposing new problems), which are "validated" not only via mathematical theorems, user studies, or benchmarks, but by arguing for your conclusions, the way a philosophy thesis would (though of course technical results can be used to bolster the argument where appropriate). The PhD theses Douglas Hofstadter supervises are an example.
  - bscofield 16y ago
    Or you can approach it from the philosophy side; one of the profs in my grad program was a joint appointment in philosophy (logic) and computer science.
  - Poleris 16y ago
    I would deeply appreciate advice from you or anyone who has thoughts. I did a double major in CS and Business during my undergrad at CMU ('09) and focused very much on practical learning (read: programming/web apps) and corporate/startup endeavors. However, I was always drawn towards studying the relationship between minds and machines on my own time. Mostly triggered from Godel's theorem, reading GEB/AI books, and some obsessive impulse to learn about my own mind. Now that I'm working my first job, this impulse is stronger than ever. I find myself reading papers/books on philosophy, anthropic mechanism, AI, etc. during what free time I have. I suspect that I should study a PhD in this subject, given this impulse doesn't seem to be going away. However, I have absolutely no research experience and had little contact with professors during my undergrad. Would you advise I seriously pursue this intellectual interest as a PhD (versus during my free time)? If so, do you have any thoughts on how I should go about applying? Given that most applications require research recommendations, I was thinking of contacting professors of papers I admired, but am not sure how well that approach would work. Thank you for reading! My email is in my profile if that works better.
jasamer 16y ago
I'm studying Computer Science+Philosophy in Munich, although, technically, Philosophy is a part of my CS studies (one can choose a subject different from CS to do some credits in, many choose Math/Physics, I chose Philosophy). The fun thing is that when I wrote my motivational letter about why I wanted to do Philosophy, my reasoning why I'd want to do it was almost the same as in this article.
mayank 16y ago
Caveat: this is an anecdote, and your mileage may vary, but I think it illustrates a point of contention in the "two cultures". As a computer science major in the US, I once took a "philosophy of mind" course out of a genuine multi-faceted interest in AI. I was working on undergraduate machine learning research at the time, so I used to pore over the green Norvig/Stewart AI book like a religious text. Unfortunately, the philosophy course seemed deeply rooted in classical theories like dualism (which I think of as a rationalization for religious dogma), ignoring any and all modern advances in neuroscience. The final straw was the lecture unit on "artificial minds". There was a lot of uninformed speculation about AI, which really disappointed me. The professor (and textbooks) completely ignored beautiful advances like Godel's theorem, which would make a great foundation for philosophizing about axiomatic "minds". I tried to speak up about what AI really is, even tried bringing Russell/Norvig into class, but I don't know if it was the professor or the students who were more resistant to facts clogging up the debate. Anyway, I have nothing against philosophers, and I believe that they are an important part of the intellectual framework of academia. However, in inter-disciplinary cases like this, I really hope that they get people that can successfully straddle both sides of the divide. Stephen Hawking's quote in his new book comes to mind. I don't remember the exact words, but it was along the lines that a lot (not all, naturally) of philosophers have closed themselves off to science and thus denied themselves access to the greatest intellectual developments of the 20th century.
- chrisaycock 16y ago
  Paul Graham wrote an essay a few years ago about his very frustration with this: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
  - igravious 16y ago
    As someone with a degree in philosophy and mathematics but who has earned his bread & butter doing QA, coding, network and sys admin I feel that I have a lot of inside knowledge that I can bring to this debate. I could fill an essay myself in response to Paul's post but I'll keep it brief so as not to bore anyone. This: "Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other university subjects do. There is no core of knowledge one must master. The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered." The subject matter of philosophy is the world of abstract ideas. Some call them universals, they are to be contrasted with cold hard facts, stuff we can reason scientifically about. It is not that "few were sufficiently correct" but rather (as Kant for one pointed out) that metaphysical claims like the famous "Gods exists" or the "universe is infinite" can be asserted to be true while at the same time there opposite can be asserted to be true! "God does not exist". "The universe is finite". Now, does that make everyone wrong? No, of course not, a wiser person just digs deeper. And this: "But did studying logic teach me the importance of thinking this way, or make me any better at it? I don't know." The thing is, as I've come to realize (from thinking about it long and hard!) is that logic is not a part of philosophy. Yes they go hand-in-hand but logic is really a cross-disciplinary tool with applications in many disciplines, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and so on. Just because it has traditionally been very closely associated with philosophy can mislead us into thinking that logic is part of philosophy. And so to blame philosophy because learning logic didn't benefit you in the way you thought it would is a category error at the very least in my opinion. I'll stop here but I have to say, I would love if Paul were a bit more humble and a bit less arrogant and realize that there's a reason philosophy is so difficult. It's not because it's all smoke and mirrors and sophistry - though there is some of that, and you need the mental tools to sort the wheat from the chaff. You know Richard Rorty has said that philosophy is merely a branch of literature! And he was one of the leading philosophical figures of the last century! Think about that for a moment...
niels 16y ago
Peter Naur (Turing award winner) wrote an Antiphilosophical Dictionary. http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html.
simonsarris 16y ago
My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. They strongly encouraged CS majors to dual-major in CS/Philosophy or CS/Psychology. It was called the "Minds and Machines" program and was a precursor to their full-on undergraduate Cognitive Science program, Which didn't exist when I started in 2006 but does today. I went in as Computer Science and picked up the CS/Philosophy dual-major in my first semester after talking at length to my advisor (who was head of Minds and Machines and is now head of Cognitive Science). People ask me about it a lot when they find out, but to me it always seemed like an impeccably good match.
- gwern 16y ago
  > My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. That almost happened to me. I started with CS at RIT, but since they didn't have a philosophy major, I left as a sophomore. Apparently, the year after I left, they got a major. I was told by a professor that I was one of the examples used in the lobbying for the major. This didn't make me feel much better.
liuhenry 16y ago
When is this being implemented? It wasn't an option for the 2011 application cycle, and unfortunately it's a real hassle to change courses from the one you applied to.
zoomzoom 16y ago
As an undergrad philosopher who became self-taught hacker after graduation, I can say with confidence that this is a great synthesis. While contemporary academic philosophy is little more than a circular passing of jargon, there is no doubt that the practice of philosophy has inspired great science. Kant, for example, wrote books about anatomy and other empirical topics prior to this metaphysical work, and made prescient suggestions about the existence of other galaxies and the theory of evolution. Perhaps an infusion of CS will help win Philosophy back from the ivory tower.
- jpadvo 16y ago
  As a hacker who married a philosopher, I can also say with confidence that this is a great synthesis. More than just in grand sweeping ways, the fields align in the little ways, too. My wife understands my work more quickly than other non-hackers because she understands the concept of a rigorous artificial language ( she uses formal logic, I use programming languages ).
- rpbertp13 16y ago
  As another undergrad philosopher turned self-taught hacker I wouldn't see why you'd want Philosophy to come down from the ivory tower. It's hard to imagine what would be of Philosophy today if Kant had spent all his life writing about science and hadn't given us the Critique of Pure Reason.
  - zoomzoom 16y ago
    The point is that the CPR was only possible because of his earlier work in the "hard" sciences, at least in IMHO.
- thrdOriginal 16y ago
  I am yet another hacker with an undergrad in philosophy. The first college-level programming class I took (in high school, so before I had decided to major in either) was taught by a professor with his Masters in Philosophy and PhD in Computer Science. I think there is an incredibly strong correlation.
scotty79 16y ago
Great. Next joint course: Operating Heavy Machinery and Scrapbooking.
ezyang 16y ago
I'm a computer scientist currently taking the History and Philosophy of Science course at Cambridge (an interesting combination that is one of the perks of being an exchange student) and wholeheartedly endorse this. Logic, with its philosophical roots, has had an enormous impact on Computer Science, and I believe Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mathematics have a lot to say about Computer Science. (AI is a kind of special child: I think you need some neuroscience added in as well.)
scotty79 16y ago
Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about.
- sid0 16y ago
  Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about. That sounds like a lot of research in maths and CS.
  - scotty79 16y ago
    Math and cs can be researched because hypothesis in math and cs can be shown to be wrong. Can you point one theory that was ruled out to be wrong thanks to philosophy? If you can't then how can you find philosophy and (any) research similar?
- jscn 16y ago
  Philosophy is a necessary condition for science (which I take it is the process you have in mind for 'actually discover[ing] something').
fogus 16y ago
I double-majored in CS and Philosophy during undergrad, but didn't want to stay an extra semester to complete the requirements for the latter. It's something that I hope to complete one day so maybe several months in Oxford is an option for the future.
binarymax 16y ago
I tried to sort of create a program like this for myself 15 years ago. I ended up with a B.S. in comp sci and math - with one credit short of a philosophy minor. Unfortunately there were no professors asking the fusion questions, but I did some reading when I could.
- igravious 16y ago
  That's a real shame. I hope you still keep up to date with philosophical thought. You might think that philosophy moves very slowly but a few disciplines that have emerged are bio-ethics, deep-ecology, connections between aesthetics and justice and all ground is gone over all the time. I got a degree in phil. and math. I taught myself how to program and read theoretical comp sci books on data structures and algorithms, operating systems and compiler theory, type theory and symbolic calculus and the church / turing thesis and so on to flesh out the other side but I would dearly love to have been formally taught the comp sci stuff because in truth I went through it all for the love of it and have rarely applied that knowledge :) I feel like I'm split down the middle, I am delighted that there now exists a course like this. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes.
tlrobinson 16y ago
This sounds great. My favorite semester during college (majored in comp sci / engineering) was when I took a philosophy course along with my regular CS and math courses.
bobds 16y ago
I was reminded of the following excerpt in Howard Marks' book "Mr. Nice", who wanted to study Philosophy of Science in Oxford University many decades ago: "There was a problem with respect to how my diploma course would be financed. In those days there were two main grant-giving bodies funding postgraduate study: the Department of Education and the Science Research Council. The former limited its grants to graduates in non-scientific subjects while the latter would only fund students undertaking research degrees in the pure sciences. These regulations precluded my Philosophy of Science studies being funded by either body."
jonallanharper 16y ago
Rand's theory of concepts is the explicit cognitive framework of induction and abstraction - both vital to comp sci endeavors. To overlook her work is a tremendous oversight, a detriment to this congruency.
igravious 16y ago
Hey, get this ... Maybe Comp. Sci. is too important to be in the "Sciences". What about all those in the humanities that would benefit from knowing how to code and having the basics of knowledge about data structures and algorithms? I know many numbers of people with history degrees, philosophy degrees (myself included), you name it - who taught themselves how to code because it was impossible for them to take comp sci course as part of humanities. There is this new field of electronic poetry where poets use the power of computers and the internet to create a new kind of poetry. These people generally come from a background in literature and they are very creative types but they have to enlist the help of graphics designers and programmers to do computer side of things as opposed to the poetic side of things. It is like literacy. Before the twentieth century pervasive literacy was not the norm. I would argue that computers are nearly too ubiquitous and will only become more and more so that computer literacy is a real hindrance. The option should be there to those that want it. Computer science, mathematics and logic should inhabit a third academic space in academia I would argue. Science/Engineering, Comp Sci/Math/Logic, Humanities ... Any takers? :)
- jokermatt999 16y ago
  I'd say basic coding should be taught in the typical "typing and MS Office" classes, if possible. I don't mean higher level concepts, but a simple footing in it can help a lot.
akeefer 16y ago
I did my BA in philosophy (focusing mainly on ethics and political philosophy) and my MS in computer science, and I personally found the mix to work incredibly well, though not in the obvious way many people expect (which tends to be around epistemology and logic on the philosophy side and AI on the computer science side). The point of a philosophy education is not to teach you anything in particular; there's no body of knowledge to absorb in the same way that there is for math or any scientific or engineering discipline. At most, you can treat a philosophy education as a history course focusing on the history of human thought (which is why, in response to some other posters, it's important in philosophy to study the past, even if no one believes such things anymore: it's more like history than physics). The really valuable thing for me, however, was learning the process itself: how to make assumptions and pre-conditions clear and separate them from the rest of your thinking, how to make arguments clearly and fairly, how to break complex questions or topics down into smaller pieces and the put them back together, how to not take it personally when someone disagrees with you. A philosophy course of study will also make you a better, clearer writer and communicator. (And yes, sure, there's plenty of room for BSing and incomprehensibility in there, but if you take that away from a philosophy course you're missing out.) All those skills translate and complement computer science very well. At its core, the process of software engineering (as opposed to just programming) is the art of taking something really complex and breaking it down into the right set of components: ones that are large enough to be useful, but small enough to be correct, and with the right relationships between them. Taking a large program or problem and breaking it down like that is basically exactly the same set of skills that you develop when you study (and do) analytic philosophy. Being able to clearly separate assumptions, facts, conjecture, predictions, and arguments is also a key skill in a domain like CS where thinking outside the box, as it were, is always important, and where the rules and possibilities change so rapidly. And of course, it never hurts to become a better writer: I've worked with and known some brilliant engineers who were far less productive than they should have been simply because they couldn't present their ideas clearly enough to other people, and there's simply no way to get a team to all work in the same direction if they don't all share the same vision. A brilliant idea that no one else understands because it's been poorly communicated is usually fairly worthless. As an aside: I know PG doesn't seem to think he got much value out of his philosophy classes, but I wonder if his essays would be as clearly thought out and put together as they are without it. I certainly know my own writing would be far less clear (and far less rigorous) if I hadn't done my BA in philosophy and if I'd just focused on CS.
user24 16y ago
I completed my MSc in Computer Science at Oxford in 2009. My undergrad degree was a joint honours IT and Philosophical Studies BA (UoW Lampeter). From my (limited) knowledge of how comlab/Oxford works, it looks like students will be splitting their time between the philosophy department and comlab. I can't quite see how they're marrying the two together. I know from my first degree that it's a great combination - there's more crossover than you'd initially think. But it does rather seem as though you'd just be splitting your time between two very different departments, rather than literally studying the two subjects in harmony. Interesting development though. (PS: happy to answer your questions about Oxford/CS/applying/etc)
KevinMS 16y ago
So take a degree, CS, which is almost irrelevant to most working developers, and mix in something that is irrelevant to almost everybody alive. I'm already seeing job adds for sysadmins, php programmers and front end developers requiring a CS degree. In the future they'll be philosophers too?
cgopalan 16y ago
Its almost eerie (in a positive way) that I see this post right when I was thinking about something along the lines of how an effective engineering course should be structured. Only recently I developed an interest in the classics (greek and roman) and also started reading Milton's "Paradise lost", and Seneca's "On the shortness of life". Two things stood out in a lot of these works - 1) the richness of content - meaning how inevitably it makes you think hard while reading, and 2) the usage of language in a way that makes you see the language in a whole new light (especially in Milton's classic - English never looked so beautiful!!). During the process of reading these classics, I was convinced that a 3-4 year study of an engineering (or science) discipline would only be vastly improved if the subject matter had its share of philosophy and literature (call it "lit-phil"). I would go so far as to say that it should be a 50-50 split. There There will always be a debate as to what works should be included, but the amount of quality work is so vast that being selective would not matter. We can argue that to incorporate this into the same 3-4 years of study, we could eliminate some of the engineering course material to make way. Do we really need all those engineering subjects in that much detail? So then should be an arts degree at all? I would say yes, and thats only for people who just feel overwhelmed by science or engineering (who I come across aplenty) and prefer to study only the arts. If there should be an arts-only degree, why would I propose that engineering be always accompanied by study of lit-phil? Simply because I believe that a mind that needs to grasp engineering has to be somewhat prepared by philosophy and literature and whetted constantly by it during the study. Now, the only kicker is that at the age of doing a bachelors (which is between 17-19 and 21-23 for the majority), the average engineering bachelor student would not be mature enough to appreciate a healthy dosage of lit-phil. They would inevitably ask why they are being subjected to something totally unrelated - whereas they do not understand that the subject matter is slowly working on their brain in the background (if they care to put an effort into it). Hope this does not come across as a rant against engineering. I studied electrical engineering and have utmost regard for the field (much more so than "software engineering" - and I am not talking about computer science and engineering here). But I believe its crucial to pay attention to how we inculcate that engineering knowledge into minds in general. And develop engineers that are not afraid to think and contemplate.
quinndupont 16y ago
How many people on Hacker News have actually studied philosophy? Judging by the top-ranked comments it seems like a) few have studied philosophy seriously, and b) few seem to think there is much value in philosophy. (And by "seriously", I mean beyond a passing understanding of philosophy of mind. If you haven't read the better part of the canon, including boring folk such as Kant or Descartes, that isn't being serious)
- epochwolf 16y ago
  I took a few classes and probably could have written exactly what PG wrote[1] on it. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
derrida 16y ago
This is only reasonable, after all, philosophers at the beginning of the 20th century are responsible for theories about languages and logic that directly lead to the computer. If only those wanking on about "the semantic web" cared to look at some of the philosophy done since the 70s by folks such as Saul Kripke, they might discover that the idea of semantically competent computers is as likely as conscious computers.
jph00 16y ago
I majored in philosophy at university. My business partner has a PhD in computer science. When we started working together, we discovered that we had studied many of the same things - Godel's theorem, the halting problem, boolean logic, etc. Much of his overlapping stuff came from a subject called "Theory of Computation", whereas mine came from "Formal Logic" and "Metamathematics". I think the idea of combining the fields is really brilliant. Nowadays I do a lot of programming (I founded a couple of businesses that are software-focussed), and would love to have had just this kind of educational background.
keiferski 16y ago
Many of you are confusing "analytic" philosophy with all of philosophy. There are numerous distinct schools, with distinct thinkers and lines of thought. Assuming that a single quality applies to a uniform field of "philosophy" is completely misguided. There is no such thing as a uniform field of philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy
onan_barbarian 16y ago
Hah. Did this combo as a undergrad. Loved CS. Loved Philosophy. Hated their intersection, which I thought I was going to base my career around, when I was 17. Oops. Still a fun degree though.
nivertech 16y ago
I hated worked with people who did philosophy degrees. The biggest problem with them, that they dare to reason about things, which they never learnt or have no hands-on experience. They will substitute benchmarks and experiments by their theoretical logical conclusions. Same thing happens with people, who have PhD in one field and try to reason about things in different distant domain.
joshrule 16y ago
I actually majored in both computer science and philosophy at a school with a top 5 CS program and a top 50 philosophy program. I found the combination useful, but eventually grew frustrated with much of the philosophy. My classes often spent more time splitting hairs than trying to say useful things. The philosophy that actually proved most useful were my logic courses, and one or two papers from philosophy of mind. That said, philosophy is incredibly important. But, as PG has noted, we tend to do a poor job of it (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html). We need to spend more time focused on saying useful, testable things. In short, the best scientific results merge with philosophy. So, everyone should be a philosopher, but should do the majority of their philosophy as science. Again, both philosophy and computer science are important, but after studying both pretty intensely for 3.5 years (I graduated with over 180 credit hours), you have to pick and choose the philosophy. It's mostly useful for setting the initial biases on which the rest of your science will depend and for continuing to think about things science can't speak to, yet.
RobotGrrl 16y ago
This looks extremely exciting for the realm of social robotics, as the two disciplines will feed off of each other. It will be interesting to see the depth of the behaviour algorithms created while learning more about philosophy. Perhaps we will be more concerned with other factors in the behaviour, rather than just how it "appears" to the human (or whatever is interacting with it). Hopefully they won't rely too much on SAT marks for the admission process, and will look at our portfolios. It would be a shame to miss out on a potential star for this program because of low standard test grades. This is a super opportunity!

223 points by chrisaycock 16y ago

I recently completed my M.Sc in Software Engineering at the University of Oxford (Soft Eng is closely affiliated with ComLab, but is a slightly separate department) and I can only speak well of the program, its lecturers, and its resources. This looks like a great program; if I were 18 again I might consider going to Oxford for this undergrad degree.

arethuza 16y ago
I was accepted to do AI and Linguistics at Edinburgh but went off to do a "straight" CS degree elsewhere - I often wish I'd done that rather than the more mainstream degree.
chrisaycock 16y ago
There are several Oxonians on HN from the looks of it. I read for my DPhil in Computing, as did @cperciva.
- pauldoerwald 16y ago
  When did you finish your degree? Perhaps we were there at the same time? Although I was in a part-time program, so it's more likely that you know my TAs :-P.
  - chrisaycock 16y ago
    I left early in 2005; my supervisor wanted to return to his native Australia, so I went with him as a "visiting fellow".
- swombat 16y ago
  There certainly are. The Oxbridge mafia is everywhere shifty eyes. I'm pretty sure there's at least a few dozen moderately active HN users from Oxford (I'm one).
  - jedc 16y ago
    And there are a number of Cambridge grads here, too. (And quite a few that are YC founders!)
- Emore 16y ago
  Come by during the open days for the Computer Science & Philosophy programme. Chances are I'll be arranging puzzle-hunts. Edit: realised you're probably not here anymore.
  - chrisaycock 16y ago
    I went back for Alumni Weekend in September. I didn't stop by ComLab since I was busy with the port collection at Christ Church. :D
    - Emore 16y ago
      Well, I can't blame you for that ;)
- haliax 16y ago
  Which College were you at? I went to New!
  - chrisaycock 16y ago
    Christ Church

boredguy8 16y ago

How does an American get in to a program like this? Especially if, say hypothetically, they dropped out of school to work.

zachrose 16y ago
Apply?
- boredguy8 16y ago
  That's like answering, "How do I write a good book?" with "Start typing." Applying isn't the same thing as "getting in"--it's one small part. Where do you apply to? What matters in the application? Do you apply under the course or do you apply generically? Are "A-levels" a thing that matters? What are people looking for in applicants, or how do you find out?
  - geoffw8 16y ago
    Can't answer all your questions, but as a brit thats been on the brink of applying, I know that all applications go through a system called Ucas (http://www.ucas.ac.uk/ http://www.ucas.ac.uk/). I'm not sure if what we call 'Oxbridge', the big 2 (Oxford & Cambridge) handle their own applications, but I'm pretty sure Ucas is the place you need to start. I know it works (at least for UK students) on a points system, where you get points per course, and the amount is set by the grades you get. Things are different if your a 'mature' student, and if you have 'life experience'. Best thing to do is get in touch, and write a very compelling 'personal statement'. The latter being the first step to application. I'm sure theres a few guys here who can give you more (oxbridge) related advice.
    - ElliotH 16y ago
      I've gone through UCAS recently. 'UCAS Points' are only really counted for the lower-end of universities. Any university anywhere near Oxbridge in terms of reputation or entrance requirements gives offers based on A Level or International Baccalaureate or other qualifications, often followed by an interview. For example my first and second choice universities offered AAA and AAB respectively.

quanticle 16y ago

How is this different from majoring in computer science and minoring in philosophy?

ElliotH 16y ago
UK Universities don't have 'Majors' and 'Minors' you just do your degree course.
arethuza 16y ago
Well, I'm from the UK and I've never really understood the "majoring" "minoring" thing (let alone GPAs).
lukeschlather 16y ago
A major/minor does not require you to integrate the two disciplines. Presumably at least this degree will require some synthesis. At my alma mater we didn't have minors at all, only "concentrations" and concentrations were required to be interdisciplinary. Of course St. Olaf is a specific American school, I may be overgeneralizing to Oxford.
sid0 16y ago
It seems like it has a roughly 50-50 CS/philosophy focus. While I'm majoring in CS, I'm also a philosophy minor in all but name (my university doesn't offer minors), and I really would have liked more philosophy in the mix.
Swannie 16y ago
This is approximately a "double major". For those in the UK unaware, "X and Y" suggests an approximate 50:50 split. "X with Y" suggests a heavy emphasis on X, more of a 75:25 split. And as others have pointed out, in the UK, apart from in some specific degrees (Cambridge Science Tripos springs to mind), the idea of completing a degree out of mainly self-selected units is a bit crazy.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- 16y ago

rdouble 16y ago

I did a math and philosophy double major. The danger of a degree like this is that the stark reality of a programming job will seem unbearably boring in comparison to what you studied in school.

etherealG 16y ago
I would say you have the wrong type of programming job then. Some can be massively creative and require "philosophical" thought. Areas that come to mind are the ones in computer science which bleed over naturally into philosophy, e.g. AI.
- nervechannel 16y ago
  Yes, and graduates with an interdisciplinary background and strong reasoning skills are more likely to get the interesting jobs than pure software engineers who know JUnit inside-out. (Generalizing from myself with a sample size of one)
- rdouble 16y ago
  I'm not sure the philosophy/AI crossover in the 1980s and 90s was all that useful. Things may have improved, but I doubt it. You're better off studying applied statistics if you want to get into AI. Even Wittgenstein told his students that studying philosophy is a waste of time and they should become car mechanics, instead. "If you're studying geology, which is all facts, as soon as you get out of school you forget it all, but philosophy you remember just enough to screw you up for the rest of your life." --Steve Martin
jscn 16y ago
Yeah, I must say that programming web apps and battling with CSS is pretty dull after studying philosophy.
- adrianN 16y ago
  It's pretty dull even before studying philosophy.

michaelleland 16y ago

Strongly reminiscent of John Galt's (and his friends') degrees in Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand--they studied physics and philosophy together. Then then changed the world.

DanielBMarkham 16y ago

These two fields have been begging to merge for several years now. Great to see it happening. I'd like to see extended to a post-grad program. You could choose either business coding or academic coding. Both are rich areas for combining these two disciplines. Philosophy gives CS a broader, more conceptual view of how things fit together, and CS gives philosophy something useful to do -- it provides a hard edge from which to judge whether one philosophical stance is more or less useful in a given situation.

_delirium 16y ago
You can manage to do something like that as a CS PhD if you have the right advisor, though it's harder to pull off than it used to be as CS has gotten much more obsessed about being a rigorous science. It especially used to be the case in AI, and in some corners still is, that a good thesis makes conceptual and philosophical advances in analyzing problems and domains (or proposing new problems), which are "validated" not only via mathematical theorems, user studies, or benchmarks, but by arguing for your conclusions, the way a philosophy thesis would (though of course technical results can be used to bolster the argument where appropriate). The PhD theses Douglas Hofstadter supervises are an example.
- bscofield 16y ago
  Or you can approach it from the philosophy side; one of the profs in my grad program was a joint appointment in philosophy (logic) and computer science.
- Poleris 16y ago
  I would deeply appreciate advice from you or anyone who has thoughts. I did a double major in CS and Business during my undergrad at CMU ('09) and focused very much on practical learning (read: programming/web apps) and corporate/startup endeavors. However, I was always drawn towards studying the relationship between minds and machines on my own time. Mostly triggered from Godel's theorem, reading GEB/AI books, and some obsessive impulse to learn about my own mind. Now that I'm working my first job, this impulse is stronger than ever. I find myself reading papers/books on philosophy, anthropic mechanism, AI, etc. during what free time I have. I suspect that I should study a PhD in this subject, given this impulse doesn't seem to be going away. However, I have absolutely no research experience and had little contact with professors during my undergrad. Would you advise I seriously pursue this intellectual interest as a PhD (versus during my free time)? If so, do you have any thoughts on how I should go about applying? Given that most applications require research recommendations, I was thinking of contacting professors of papers I admired, but am not sure how well that approach would work. Thank you for reading! My email is in my profile if that works better.

jasamer 16y ago

I'm studying Computer Science+Philosophy in Munich, although, technically, Philosophy is a part of my CS studies (one can choose a subject different from CS to do some credits in, many choose Math/Physics, I chose Philosophy). The fun thing is that when I wrote my motivational letter about why I wanted to do Philosophy, my reasoning why I'd want to do it was almost the same as in this article.

mayank 16y ago

Caveat: this is an anecdote, and your mileage may vary, but I think it illustrates a point of contention in the "two cultures". As a computer science major in the US, I once took a "philosophy of mind" course out of a genuine multi-faceted interest in AI. I was working on undergraduate machine learning research at the time, so I used to pore over the green Norvig/Stewart AI book like a religious text. Unfortunately, the philosophy course seemed deeply rooted in classical theories like dualism (which I think of as a rationalization for religious dogma), ignoring any and all modern advances in neuroscience. The final straw was the lecture unit on "artificial minds". There was a lot of uninformed speculation about AI, which really disappointed me. The professor (and textbooks) completely ignored beautiful advances like Godel's theorem, which would make a great foundation for philosophizing about axiomatic "minds". I tried to speak up about what AI really is, even tried bringing Russell/Norvig into class, but I don't know if it was the professor or the students who were more resistant to facts clogging up the debate. Anyway, I have nothing against philosophers, and I believe that they are an important part of the intellectual framework of academia. However, in inter-disciplinary cases like this, I really hope that they get people that can successfully straddle both sides of the divide. Stephen Hawking's quote in his new book comes to mind. I don't remember the exact words, but it was along the lines that a lot (not all, naturally) of philosophers have closed themselves off to science and thus denied themselves access to the greatest intellectual developments of the 20th century.

chrisaycock 16y ago
Paul Graham wrote an essay a few years ago about his very frustration with this: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- igravious 16y ago
  As someone with a degree in philosophy and mathematics but who has earned his bread & butter doing QA, coding, network and sys admin I feel that I have a lot of inside knowledge that I can bring to this debate. I could fill an essay myself in response to Paul's post but I'll keep it brief so as not to bore anyone. This: "Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other university subjects do. There is no core of knowledge one must master. The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered." The subject matter of philosophy is the world of abstract ideas. Some call them universals, they are to be contrasted with cold hard facts, stuff we can reason scientifically about. It is not that "few were sufficiently correct" but rather (as Kant for one pointed out) that metaphysical claims like the famous "Gods exists" or the "universe is infinite" can be asserted to be true while at the same time there opposite can be asserted to be true! "God does not exist". "The universe is finite". Now, does that make everyone wrong? No, of course not, a wiser person just digs deeper. And this: "But did studying logic teach me the importance of thinking this way, or make me any better at it? I don't know." The thing is, as I've come to realize (from thinking about it long and hard!) is that logic is not a part of philosophy. Yes they go hand-in-hand but logic is really a cross-disciplinary tool with applications in many disciplines, mathematics, computer science, philosophy and so on. Just because it has traditionally been very closely associated with philosophy can mislead us into thinking that logic is part of philosophy. And so to blame philosophy because learning logic didn't benefit you in the way you thought it would is a category error at the very least in my opinion. I'll stop here but I have to say, I would love if Paul were a bit more humble and a bit less arrogant and realize that there's a reason philosophy is so difficult. It's not because it's all smoke and mirrors and sophistry - though there is some of that, and you need the mental tools to sort the wheat from the chaff. You know Richard Rorty has said that philosophy is merely a branch of literature! And he was one of the leading philosophical figures of the last century! Think about that for a moment...

niels 16y ago

Peter Naur (Turing award winner) wrote an Antiphilosophical Dictionary. http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html http://www.naur.com/Antiphil.html.

simonsarris 16y ago

My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. They strongly encouraged CS majors to dual-major in CS/Philosophy or CS/Psychology. It was called the "Minds and Machines" program and was a precursor to their full-on undergraduate Cognitive Science program, Which didn't exist when I started in 2006 but does today. I went in as Computer Science and picked up the CS/Philosophy dual-major in my first semester after talking at length to my advisor (who was head of Minds and Machines and is now head of Cognitive Science). People ask me about it a lot when they find out, but to me it always seemed like an impeccably good match.

gwern 16y ago
> My college (RPI) had been pushing something very similar for a while now, which is why I have a degree in Computer Science and Philosophy. That almost happened to me. I started with CS at RIT, but since they didn't have a philosophy major, I left as a sophomore. Apparently, the year after I left, they got a major. I was told by a professor that I was one of the examples used in the lobbying for the major. This didn't make me feel much better.

liuhenry 16y ago

When is this being implemented? It wasn't an option for the 2011 application cycle, and unfortunately it's a real hassle to change courses from the one you applied to.

zoomzoom 16y ago

As an undergrad philosopher who became self-taught hacker after graduation, I can say with confidence that this is a great synthesis. While contemporary academic philosophy is little more than a circular passing of jargon, there is no doubt that the practice of philosophy has inspired great science. Kant, for example, wrote books about anatomy and other empirical topics prior to this metaphysical work, and made prescient suggestions about the existence of other galaxies and the theory of evolution. Perhaps an infusion of CS will help win Philosophy back from the ivory tower.

jpadvo 16y ago
As a hacker who married a philosopher, I can also say with confidence that this is a great synthesis. More than just in grand sweeping ways, the fields align in the little ways, too. My wife understands my work more quickly than other non-hackers because she understands the concept of a rigorous artificial language ( she uses formal logic, I use programming languages ).
rpbertp13 16y ago
As another undergrad philosopher turned self-taught hacker I wouldn't see why you'd want Philosophy to come down from the ivory tower. It's hard to imagine what would be of Philosophy today if Kant had spent all his life writing about science and hadn't given us the Critique of Pure Reason.
- zoomzoom 16y ago
  The point is that the CPR was only possible because of his earlier work in the "hard" sciences, at least in IMHO.
thrdOriginal 16y ago
I am yet another hacker with an undergrad in philosophy. The first college-level programming class I took (in high school, so before I had decided to major in either) was taught by a professor with his Masters in Philosophy and PhD in Computer Science. I think there is an incredibly strong correlation.

scotty79 16y ago

Great. Next joint course: Operating Heavy Machinery and Scrapbooking.

ezyang 16y ago

I'm a computer scientist currently taking the History and Philosophy of Science course at Cambridge (an interesting combination that is one of the perks of being an exchange student) and wholeheartedly endorse this. Logic, with its philosophical roots, has had an enormous impact on Computer Science, and I believe Philosophy of Science and Philosophy of Mathematics have a lot to say about Computer Science. (AI is a kind of special child: I think you need some neuroscience added in as well.)

scotty79 16y ago

Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about.

sid0 16y ago
Philosophy is what you do when you don't know something and don't know how to actually discover anything about it but you are not wise enough to let it go and find something you could actually discover something about. That sounds like a lot of research in maths and CS.
- scotty79 16y ago
  Math and cs can be researched because hypothesis in math and cs can be shown to be wrong. Can you point one theory that was ruled out to be wrong thanks to philosophy? If you can't then how can you find philosophy and (any) research similar?
jscn 16y ago
Philosophy is a necessary condition for science (which I take it is the process you have in mind for 'actually discover[ing] something').

fogus 16y ago

I double-majored in CS and Philosophy during undergrad, but didn't want to stay an extra semester to complete the requirements for the latter. It's something that I hope to complete one day so maybe several months in Oxford is an option for the future.

binarymax 16y ago

I tried to sort of create a program like this for myself 15 years ago. I ended up with a B.S. in comp sci and math - with one credit short of a philosophy minor. Unfortunately there were no professors asking the fusion questions, but I did some reading when I could.

igravious 16y ago
That's a real shame. I hope you still keep up to date with philosophical thought. You might think that philosophy moves very slowly but a few disciplines that have emerged are bio-ethics, deep-ecology, connections between aesthetics and justice and all ground is gone over all the time. I got a degree in phil. and math. I taught myself how to program and read theoretical comp sci books on data structures and algorithms, operating systems and compiler theory, type theory and symbolic calculus and the church / turing thesis and so on to flesh out the other side but I would dearly love to have been formally taught the comp sci stuff because in truth I went through it all for the love of it and have rarely applied that knowledge :) I feel like I'm split down the middle, I am delighted that there now exists a course like this. The more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

tlrobinson 16y ago

This sounds great. My favorite semester during college (majored in comp sci / engineering) was when I took a philosophy course along with my regular CS and math courses.

bobds 16y ago

I was reminded of the following excerpt in Howard Marks' book "Mr. Nice", who wanted to study Philosophy of Science in Oxford University many decades ago: "There was a problem with respect to how my diploma course would be financed. In those days there were two main grant-giving bodies funding postgraduate study: the Department of Education and the Science Research Council. The former limited its grants to graduates in non-scientific subjects while the latter would only fund students undertaking research degrees in the pure sciences. These regulations precluded my Philosophy of Science studies being funded by either body."

jonallanharper 16y ago

Rand's theory of concepts is the explicit cognitive framework of induction and abstraction - both vital to comp sci endeavors. To overlook her work is a tremendous oversight, a detriment to this congruency.

igravious 16y ago

Hey, get this ... Maybe Comp. Sci. is too important to be in the "Sciences". What about all those in the humanities that would benefit from knowing how to code and having the basics of knowledge about data structures and algorithms? I know many numbers of people with history degrees, philosophy degrees (myself included), you name it - who taught themselves how to code because it was impossible for them to take comp sci course as part of humanities. There is this new field of electronic poetry where poets use the power of computers and the internet to create a new kind of poetry. These people generally come from a background in literature and they are very creative types but they have to enlist the help of graphics designers and programmers to do computer side of things as opposed to the poetic side of things. It is like literacy. Before the twentieth century pervasive literacy was not the norm. I would argue that computers are nearly too ubiquitous and will only become more and more so that computer literacy is a real hindrance. The option should be there to those that want it. Computer science, mathematics and logic should inhabit a third academic space in academia I would argue. Science/Engineering, Comp Sci/Math/Logic, Humanities ... Any takers? :)

jokermatt999 16y ago
I'd say basic coding should be taught in the typical "typing and MS Office" classes, if possible. I don't mean higher level concepts, but a simple footing in it can help a lot.

akeefer 16y ago

I did my BA in philosophy (focusing mainly on ethics and political philosophy) and my MS in computer science, and I personally found the mix to work incredibly well, though not in the obvious way many people expect (which tends to be around epistemology and logic on the philosophy side and AI on the computer science side). The point of a philosophy education is not to teach you anything in particular; there's no body of knowledge to absorb in the same way that there is for math or any scientific or engineering discipline. At most, you can treat a philosophy education as a history course focusing on the history of human thought (which is why, in response to some other posters, it's important in philosophy to study the past, even if no one believes such things anymore: it's more like history than physics). The really valuable thing for me, however, was learning the process itself: how to make assumptions and pre-conditions clear and separate them from the rest of your thinking, how to make arguments clearly and fairly, how to break complex questions or topics down into smaller pieces and the put them back together, how to not take it personally when someone disagrees with you. A philosophy course of study will also make you a better, clearer writer and communicator. (And yes, sure, there's plenty of room for BSing and incomprehensibility in there, but if you take that away from a philosophy course you're missing out.) All those skills translate and complement computer science very well. At its core, the process of software engineering (as opposed to just programming) is the art of taking something really complex and breaking it down into the right set of components: ones that are large enough to be useful, but small enough to be correct, and with the right relationships between them. Taking a large program or problem and breaking it down like that is basically exactly the same set of skills that you develop when you study (and do) analytic philosophy. Being able to clearly separate assumptions, facts, conjecture, predictions, and arguments is also a key skill in a domain like CS where thinking outside the box, as it were, is always important, and where the rules and possibilities change so rapidly. And of course, it never hurts to become a better writer: I've worked with and known some brilliant engineers who were far less productive than they should have been simply because they couldn't present their ideas clearly enough to other people, and there's simply no way to get a team to all work in the same direction if they don't all share the same vision. A brilliant idea that no one else understands because it's been poorly communicated is usually fairly worthless. As an aside: I know PG doesn't seem to think he got much value out of his philosophy classes, but I wonder if his essays would be as clearly thought out and put together as they are without it. I certainly know my own writing would be far less clear (and far less rigorous) if I hadn't done my BA in philosophy and if I'd just focused on CS.

user24 16y ago

I completed my MSc in Computer Science at Oxford in 2009. My undergrad degree was a joint honours IT and Philosophical Studies BA (UoW Lampeter). From my (limited) knowledge of how comlab/Oxford works, it looks like students will be splitting their time between the philosophy department and comlab. I can't quite see how they're marrying the two together. I know from my first degree that it's a great combination - there's more crossover than you'd initially think. But it does rather seem as though you'd just be splitting your time between two very different departments, rather than literally studying the two subjects in harmony. Interesting development though. (PS: happy to answer your questions about Oxford/CS/applying/etc)

KevinMS 16y ago

So take a degree, CS, which is almost irrelevant to most working developers, and mix in something that is irrelevant to almost everybody alive. I'm already seeing job adds for sysadmins, php programmers and front end developers requiring a CS degree. In the future they'll be philosophers too?

cgopalan 16y ago

Its almost eerie (in a positive way) that I see this post right when I was thinking about something along the lines of how an effective engineering course should be structured. Only recently I developed an interest in the classics (greek and roman) and also started reading Milton's "Paradise lost", and Seneca's "On the shortness of life". Two things stood out in a lot of these works - 1) the richness of content - meaning how inevitably it makes you think hard while reading, and 2) the usage of language in a way that makes you see the language in a whole new light (especially in Milton's classic - English never looked so beautiful!!). During the process of reading these classics, I was convinced that a 3-4 year study of an engineering (or science) discipline would only be vastly improved if the subject matter had its share of philosophy and literature (call it "lit-phil"). I would go so far as to say that it should be a 50-50 split. There There will always be a debate as to what works should be included, but the amount of quality work is so vast that being selective would not matter. We can argue that to incorporate this into the same 3-4 years of study, we could eliminate some of the engineering course material to make way. Do we really need all those engineering subjects in that much detail? So then should be an arts degree at all? I would say yes, and thats only for people who just feel overwhelmed by science or engineering (who I come across aplenty) and prefer to study only the arts. If there should be an arts-only degree, why would I propose that engineering be always accompanied by study of lit-phil? Simply because I believe that a mind that needs to grasp engineering has to be somewhat prepared by philosophy and literature and whetted constantly by it during the study. Now, the only kicker is that at the age of doing a bachelors (which is between 17-19 and 21-23 for the majority), the average engineering bachelor student would not be mature enough to appreciate a healthy dosage of lit-phil. They would inevitably ask why they are being subjected to something totally unrelated - whereas they do not understand that the subject matter is slowly working on their brain in the background (if they care to put an effort into it). Hope this does not come across as a rant against engineering. I studied electrical engineering and have utmost regard for the field (much more so than "software engineering" - and I am not talking about computer science and engineering here). But I believe its crucial to pay attention to how we inculcate that engineering knowledge into minds in general. And develop engineers that are not afraid to think and contemplate.

quinndupont 16y ago

How many people on Hacker News have actually studied philosophy? Judging by the top-ranked comments it seems like a) few have studied philosophy seriously, and b) few seem to think there is much value in philosophy. (And by "seriously", I mean beyond a passing understanding of philosophy of mind. If you haven't read the better part of the canon, including boring folk such as Kant or Descartes, that isn't being serious)

epochwolf 16y ago
I took a few classes and probably could have written exactly what PG wrote[1] on it. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://www.paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

derrida 16y ago

This is only reasonable, after all, philosophers at the beginning of the 20th century are responsible for theories about languages and logic that directly lead to the computer. If only those wanking on about "the semantic web" cared to look at some of the philosophy done since the 70s by folks such as Saul Kripke, they might discover that the idea of semantically competent computers is as likely as conscious computers.

jph00 16y ago

I majored in philosophy at university. My business partner has a PhD in computer science. When we started working together, we discovered that we had studied many of the same things - Godel's theorem, the halting problem, boolean logic, etc. Much of his overlapping stuff came from a subject called "Theory of Computation", whereas mine came from "Formal Logic" and "Metamathematics". I think the idea of combining the fields is really brilliant. Nowadays I do a lot of programming (I founded a couple of businesses that are software-focussed), and would love to have had just this kind of educational background.

keiferski 16y ago

Many of you are confusing "analytic" philosophy with all of philosophy. There are numerous distinct schools, with distinct thinkers and lines of thought. Assuming that a single quality applies to a uniform field of "philosophy" is completely misguided. There is no such thing as a uniform field of philosophy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy

onan_barbarian 16y ago

Hah. Did this combo as a undergrad. Loved CS. Loved Philosophy. Hated their intersection, which I thought I was going to base my career around, when I was 17. Oops. Still a fun degree though.

nivertech 16y ago

I hated worked with people who did philosophy degrees. The biggest problem with them, that they dare to reason about things, which they never learnt or have no hands-on experience. They will substitute benchmarks and experiments by their theoretical logical conclusions. Same thing happens with people, who have PhD in one field and try to reason about things in different distant domain.

joshrule 16y ago

I actually majored in both computer science and philosophy at a school with a top 5 CS program and a top 50 philosophy program. I found the combination useful, but eventually grew frustrated with much of the philosophy. My classes often spent more time splitting hairs than trying to say useful things. The philosophy that actually proved most useful were my logic courses, and one or two papers from philosophy of mind. That said, philosophy is incredibly important. But, as PG has noted, we tend to do a poor job of it (http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html). We need to spend more time focused on saying useful, testable things. In short, the best scientific results merge with philosophy. So, everyone should be a philosopher, but should do the majority of their philosophy as science. Again, both philosophy and computer science are important, but after studying both pretty intensely for 3.5 years (I graduated with over 180 credit hours), you have to pick and choose the philosophy. It's mostly useful for setting the initial biases on which the rest of your science will depend and for continuing to think about things science can't speak to, yet.

RobotGrrl 16y ago

This looks extremely exciting for the realm of social robotics, as the two disciplines will feed off of each other. It will be interesting to see the depth of the behaviour algorithms created while learning more about philosophy. Perhaps we will be more concerned with other factors in the behaviour, rather than just how it "appears" to the human (or whatever is interacting with it). Hopefully they won't rely too much on SAT marks for the admission process, and will look at our portfolios. It would be a shame to miss out on a potential star for this program because of low standard test grades. This is a super opportunity!