Tuesday, January 06, 2015

Who Studies Philosophy?

Studying philosophy is valuable no matter what career path one pursues, from academia to business to entertainment to politics. The following are just a few examples of people in a wide variety of fields who have studied philosophy.

Who Studies Philosophy? - The American Philosophical Association

Monday, January 05, 2015

Alan Turing & The Cartesian Challenge

The movie might be flawed (so I hear; haven't seen it yet) but the legacy is important. A number of interesting articles are associated with this post.
At a time when more people than ever are getting to know about Alan Turing through “The Imitation Game”, it seems fitting to contribute to this growing public interest in his scientific and political legacy, by exploring his ground-breaking ideas, and the tumultuous happenings of his life, through the unique lens of academic philosophy. Although Turing never described himself as aphilosopher, his three major contributions to the history of ideas: The Turing Test, The Turing Machine and The Church-Turing Thesis, have been of great interest to scholars working in the philosophy of mind and computing. His 1950 paper, “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, which was published in the prestigious philosophical journal Mind, was especially successful in capturing the fascination of analytic philosophers.
The Computational Theory of Mind: Alan Turing & The Cartesian Challenge : The Critique