CAOS Weekly Philosophy: Return of the CS Philosophers.

[Brad Nunnally]

As of next week I will be attempted to restart what I began last semester. For those new every week I will post a situation or some type of philosophical question or thought exercise to give us a chance to deal with certain problem we might have to deal with some day.

Last semester I tried to keep the topics in the computer science field, or at least dealing with technology in some way. Before I start this semester I want to hear from you guys. Would you like me to broaden this to encompass more the computers and technology? Or keep it in the focus. If there is ever anything particular you would like to discuss drop me an email and I will come up with something dealing with it.(bluedragon0583@gmail.com More importantly for those from last semester do you enjoy this type of discussion and debate? If not why and I will try to improve.

For those in philosophy courses I welcome you to invite your class mates to join our website to take part in the fun. Hope everyone has a good semester and good luck. See ya around.


"Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiam."
Winston Churchill

[Ross Mead]

I really enjoyed these threads last semester.  It sparked some very interesting (and long!) discussions.  Personally, I think there is little I would change with them...

An interesting consideration might be making some polls when we don't have a poll going.  If you can get some poll questions going with the discussion below them, then that could be interesting, as well as add some actual numbers of regarding the opinions on the topic.

Also, I really think that these types of threads can help draw in people from different focuses of study.  I'd love to get some philosophy students in on these discussions, simply to add a different line of thought to the whole situation.  I hear Dr. Blythe is co-teaching an interdisciplinary studies course on technology and ethics with Dr. Greg Littmann (philosophy professor who gave the 'Can Machines Think?' lecture at a CAOS meeting).  Maybe we could talk to Dr. Blythe about some ethical and philosophical topics that they discuss and post something related to that topic.  That might encourage some students from the class, namely those who may be outside of the engineering major, to participate in the discussion.  We may even go as far as to ask him to make an announcement in the class regarding the post.  I big goal of mine is to draw in people from different backgrounds, so I believe that this may be a way to reach out to those people.

But answering your question, Brad, yes I like the weekly philosophy thread.  Keep up the good work! :-)