LOGICOMP 301

Philosophy and Computation

Please note: this is archived course information from 2014 for LOGICOMP 301.

Description

Computer science originated in certain logico-philosophical problems regarding the notion of an effective procedure, resulting in the attempt to make this notion mathematically rigorous and, later, in the attempt to construct machines that implement such procedures. Since the heyday of this early work in the 1930s, especially Alan Turing's account of computability, philosophy has continued to engage with computer science at various levels.

This course covers a range of issues that arises from this engagement. Beginning with Turing's famous analysis of computation, it covers Turing's thesis (the thesis that whatever is effectively computable is computable by Turing machines); universal Turing machines; the relations between logic, physics and computation; hypercomputation and the Turing barrier; what computers tell us about proof in mathematics; and the prospects of the computational implementation of intelligence (AI).

Availability 2014

Semester 1

Lecturer(s)

Lecturer(s) Associate Professor Rod Girle
Professor Fred Kroon

Points

LOGICOMP 301: 15 points

Prerequisites

PHIL 222 or COMPSCI 225