Owen,
I wish we could drag Frank into this conversation, because he is the only person we know who stands firmly in both worlds. So, Owen, you meet a beautiful woman at a cocktail party. She seems intelligent, not a person to be fobbed off, but has no experience with either Maths or Computer Science. She looks deep into your eyes, and asks "And what, Mr. Densmore, is the halting problem?" You find yourself torn between two impulses. One is to use the language that would give you credibility in the world of your mentors and colleagues. But you realize that that language is going to be of absolutely no use to her, however ever much it might make you feel authoritative to use it. She expects an answer. Yet you hesitate. What language do you use? You would start, would you not, with the idea of a "problem." A problem is some sort of difficulty that needs to be surmounted. There is a goal and something that thwarts that goal. What are these elements in the halting PROBLEM? And why is HALTING a problem? Nick From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 9:09 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Isomorphism between computation and philosophy On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 11:10 AM, Nicholas Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: <snip> Translatability has been a crucial issue in modern analytical philosophy. Translation implies that you and I have the same piano and that, while we may call the keys by different names, there is a key on your piano that corresponds to every key on mine. But philosophers have more or less given up on translateablity, I think. That seems like a useful concept. Why did they give up on it? Still, I am tempted to start with the assumption that there is a word, or small group of words, in my vocabulary that corresponds to your word, undecideable. Can you guess at what those words might be? Interestingly enough, the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy has decidability all over the place, so maybe (un)decidable is a reasonably good philosophical concept already. They use it in basically the same way computing folk do. But then Frank tells me that the philosophy departments are using highly specialized mathematics. Unfortunately, if an area of philosophy is undecidable, it has a "halting problem" .. i.e. no sense discussing it any further! :) Nick
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
