Knowledge and Computing
Title
Knowledge and Computing
Subtitle
Computer Epistemology and Constructive Skepticism
Price
€ 122,00 excl. VAT
ISBN
9789639776647
Format
Hardback
Number of pages
226
Language
English
Publication date
Dimensions
15.9 x 23.4 cm
Categories
Imprint
Also available as
eBook PDF - € 121,99
Table of Contents
Show Table of ContentsHide Table of Contents
Acknowledgements Preface of Computer Epistemology, 1991 Foreword 1 Why computer epistemology? 1.1 Prologue: why? 1.2 Knowledge about knowledge 1.3. Did it start also with the Greeks? 1.4. An important addendum about the not formalized human issue 2 Algebra, the discipline from the simplest to the most general 2.1 Introduction to the Game of Life and thinking 2.2 Algebra, the ladder from counting to coordinatizating the universe 2.3 Sets, other entity abstracti¿ns 2.4 Algebraic operations in highly practical roles: computational classes 2.5 Two examples of application algebraic methods 2.6 Abstracted reality: reflections in the brain and résumé 3 Logic, the origin of all programming 3.1 Basic problems 3.2 Logic in computers, now 3.3 About final truth, epistemic ethics 4 How uncertain uncertainty is? 4.1 Long story of uncertainty about uncertainty 4.2 Late evolution 4.3 The pragmatic view of methodologies 5 Excursion to the fields of ontology, Being and beliefs 5.1 Ontology, homunculus, constructive skepticism 5.2 Ethics: our pragma: useful and necessary 5.3 Analytic versus metaphysical, logic versus pattern 5.4 Future human roles and attitudes and constructive skepticism 6 Conclusions Appendices 1.1 Integrated control of vehicles and traffic 1.2 Scheduling 2.1 The Game of Life and the Turing Machine 2.2.History of notations 2.3 The development of algebra 2.4 The evolution of the number concepts and their combined algebraic-physical representation meaning 2.5. A simplified review of some basic algebraic concepts, operations and axioms 2.6. Support vector, simulated annealing, Markovian chains, Monte-Carlo methods 2.7 Lie algebra and group 3.1. basic notations 3.2 Non-monotonic logic 3.3 quantum computation 3.4 Prolog, logic programming 3.5 Paradoxes, undecidability 4.1 Skeptics 4.2 voting, games References Name index Subject index

Tibor Vámos

Knowledge and Computing

Computer Epistemology and Constructive Skepticism

The result of the author's extensive practical experience: a decade in computer process control using large scale systems, another decade in machine pattern-recognition for vision systems, and nearly a decade dealing with artificial intelligence and expert systems. These real-life projects have taught Vámos a critical appreciation of, and respect for, both abstract theory and the practical methodology that grows out of—and, in turn, shapes—those theories.Machine representation means a level of formalization that can be expressed by the instruments of mathematics, whereas programming is not more and not less than a special linguistic translation of these mathematical formulae. How these all are related and controlled is a most practical philosophical and computation professional task. Wide experience in the practical fields of computer science, and the research of the underlying theoretical issues have led Vámos to the development of the attitude and activity of constructive skepticism.
Author

Tibor Vámos

Tibor Vámos is Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Chairman of the Board of the Computer and Automation Research Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Author of Computer Epistemology (1991), coeditor of the Neumann Compendium (1995) and Springer Handbook of Automation (2009). He was the President of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC), engineering leader of several large scale industrial projects.