[Noisebridge-discuss] Philosophy and Computer Language Question

[Brian Morris]

I have read a little bit of Whitehead and by one of his students, and have
one of his books and another that attempts to explain it. I have also read
a pretty deep book by a computer scientist that tries to relate Ontology in
CS and in Philosopy. Ontology in CS just means stuff like Object Oriented
vs Procedural vs Functional language, that is what is the best way to
describe a problem and an algorithmic solution. Ontology in Philosophy is
about what the stuff or nature of the world is, as a necessary precursor to
a Theory of Knowledge or Epistemology. In On The Origin of Objects, CS prof
Brian C. Smith attempting a description which includes both disciplines
proposed that the two fields are tied together dependently, but he never
really completed his theory planned to include practicality.

I think that the objects, processes, functions none of are the main things
rather the relations between them. How to make this practical then if it
would be useful is a question. People who claim that all computer languages
are equivalent because of Turing I do not believe because there are
practical concerns such as useability and codeability and efficiency and so
forth, even if they all make sense in some sort of limit, it is obvious
that the best approach currently is problem dependent and so perhaps there
is a more universal approach which might help us to achieve great gains in
terms of the above issues, if so it would be something as a breakthrough as
the Object Oriented languages were.

I would like to return to reading the Whitehead stuff this year as I have
only really peeked at it although I own these two books as I said.

On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 2:13 PM, Ryan Rawson <ryanobjc at gmail.com> wrote:

> See the problem with this 'process philosophy' is it sounds like a
> MODEL of the real world to me, rather than "how it works".  Without an
> evidential backing, how can this process philosophy be anything other
> than wishful thinking?
>
> As for the computer science side of things, ultimately when you get
> down to it, everything is bits and bytes and CPU instructions. So we
> can talk in terms of floating point precisions, ranges of integers,
> memory sizes, cpu speed, etc.
>
> And on a more 'out there' moment, it would require a computer with as
> much computing power that is implied by the universe itself to
> simulate the universe. That is we can consider the universe as a
> real-time computing platform that is simulating itself, and all the
> computations that would be required to make it happen would also have
> to be replicated. Eg: all the quantum interactions and other processes
> that build up and cause reality.  Futhermore, we cant simulate reality
> because we dont know how it fully works yet.  So whatever we build as
> a simulation is merely a model of reality, and thus will always
> diverge from it in eventually (presumably?) important ways.
>
> On Fri, Dec 30, 2011 at 1:08 PM, Caleb Grayson <calebgrayson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Well.. I'm not sure. I'm more of a philosopher than a computer scientist.
> >
> > In Whitehead's Process Philosophy he said everything in reality is a
> > function or process that takes in the entire universe at every moment and
> > spits out Actual Occasions that become apart of the Creative Advance, the
> > history of functional  results in time and space.
> >
> > There is a question as to what time an space are. It is m suspicion that
> > functions and their solutions are not in time and space, but time and
> space
> > are  in functions and their solutions. Why would times and spaces for
> which
> > nothing is happening be generated by an efficient system?
> > CS, if I understand correctly, time and space have to be predefined by
> > establishing their numerical domains first.
> > I'm hoping CS in its attempt to simulate reality can give inside into it.
> >
> > Of course CS being a rational/material system has no place to calculate
> for
> > spirit/soul outside of its system which Whitehead does allow for.
> >
> > On Dec 30, 2011, at 12:34 PM, Will Sargent <will.sargent at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> my particular interest is how simulations handle events in time and
> space.
> >>  how does a simulation taken multiple input from multiple functions or
> users
> >> and align them in time•space.  what would those functions look like?
> >
> >
> > Are you talking about multi-agent systems?
> >
> > Will.
> >
> >
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