Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the Liminal by Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic and Susan Stuart, is a deeply delightful collection of essays from European Computing and Philosophy Conference (E-CAP), 2005.
I originally ordered it because of Graeme Hirst’s essay, “Views of Text Meaning in Computational Linguistics: Past, Present, and Future.” More on that in a future post but suffice it to say that he sees computational linguistics returning to a realization that “meaning” isn’t nearly as flat as some people would like to believe.
I could not help perusing some of the other essays and ran across Werner Ceusters and Barry Smith, in “Ontology as the Core Discipline of Biomedical Informatics – Legacies of the Past and Recommendations for the Future Directions of Research,” bashing the work of ISO/IEC TC 37, and its founder, Eugen Wüster, as International Standard Bad Philosophy. Not that I care for “realist ontologies” all that much but it is a very amusing essay.
Not to mention Patrick Allo’s “Formalizing Semantic Information: Lessons from Logical Pluralism.” If I say “informational pluralism” does anyone need more of a hint as to why I would like this essay?
I feel bad that I can’t mention in a reasonable sized posts all the other essays in this volume, or do more to give the flavor of those I mention above. This isn’t a scripting source book but the ideas you will find in it are going to shape the future of computation and our little corner of it for some time to come.