or: **What Philosophers and Linguists Can Learn From Theoretical Computer Science But Didn't Know To Ask**
-This course will be co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "G61.3340-002" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296-001."
+This course is co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "G61.3340" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296"
+The seminar meets in spring 2015 on Thursdays from 4-7, in
+the Linguistics building at 10 Washington Place, in room 104 (back of the first floor).
+
+<!--
+One student session will be held every Wednesday from 3-4 on the
+fourth floor at 10 Washington Place.
+-->
## Announcements ##
-The seminar meets on Mondays, starting September 13, from 4-6 in the 2nd floor Philosophy Seminar Room, at 5
-Washington Place. We may be able to shift the time around slightly to suit the
-schedule of participants; but it will remain on Mondays late
-afternoon/evenings.
+This wiki will be undergoing lots of changes throughout the semester, and particularly in these first few days as we get it set up, migrate over some of the content from the previous time
+we taught this course, and iron out various technical wrinkles. Please be patient.
+If you've eager to learn, though, you don't have to wait on us to be ready to serve you. You can go look at the [archived first version](http://lambda1.jimpryor.net) of this course. Just keep in mind that
+the text and links there haven't been updated.
-## Overview ##
+## Course Overview ##
The goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
theoretical computer science and show how they can provide insight
into established philosophical and linguistic problems.
This is not a seminar about any particular technology or software.
+
Rather, it's about a variety of conceptual/logical ideas that have been
developed in computer science and that linguists and philosophers ought to
know, or may already be unknowingly trying to reinvent.
Of necessity, this course will lay a lot of logical groundwork. But throughout
we'll be aiming to mix that groundwork with real cases
-in our home subjects where these tools play central roles. Our aim for the
+in our home subjects where these tools play central roles.
+
+Our aim for the
course is to enable you to make these tools your own; to have enough
understanding of them to recognize them in use, use them yourself at least
in simple ways, and to be able to read more about them when appropriate.
+<!--
Once we get up and running, the central focii of the course will be
**continuations**, **types**, and **monads**. One of the on-going themes will
concern evaluation order and issues about how computations (inferences,
* if time permits, "indeterministic" or "preemptively parallel" computation and linear logic
-<!--
Other keywords:
recursion using the Y-combinator
evaluation-order stratgies
the Curry-Howard isomorphism(s)
monads in category theory and computation
-->
-
+
## Who Can Participate? ##
The course will not presume previous experience with programming. We
modifying, and writing computer programs.
The course will not presume lots of mathematical or logical background, either.
-However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material.
-And it wouldn't be especially well-suited to be a first graduate-level course
+However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material; as a result,
+it will not be especially well-suited to be a first graduate-level course
in formal semantics or philosophy of language. If you have concerns about your
background, come discuss them with us.
-It hasn't yet been decided whether this course counts for satisfying the logic requirement for
-Philosophy PhD students.
+<!--
+This class will count as satisfying the logic requirement for Philosophy
+PhD students; however if this would be your first or only serious
+engagement with graduate-level formal work you should consider
+carefully, and must discuss with us, (1) whether you'll be adequately
+prepared for this course, and (2) whether you'd be better served by
+taking a logic course (at a neighboring department, or at NYU next year)
+with a more canonical syllabus.
+-->
-Faculty and students from outside of NYU Linguistics and Philosophy are wlecome
+Faculty and students from outside of NYU Linguistics and Philosophy are welcome
to audit, to the extent that this coheres well with the needs of our local
students.
what that means during the course.
* **Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
-of programming languages. The other dialect is called "CommonLisp." Scheme
+of programming languages. Scheme
is the more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in
academic circles.
Scheme itself has umpteen different "implementations", which share most of
This is what we recommend you use. (If you're already using or comfortable with
another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.)
+ Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML.
+
* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
-family of programming languages. The other dialect is called "SML" and has
-several implementations. But Caml has only one active implementation,
+family of programming languages. Caml has only one active implementation,
OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
* Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third
familiar with one of them, it's not difficult to move between it and the
other.
+<!--
+<a name=installing></a>
[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
-
-## Recommended Readings ##
-* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris
-Hankin, currently $17 on
-[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Lambda-Calculi-Computer-Scientists/dp/0954300653).
+[[Family tree of functional programming languages]]
-* (Another good book covering the same ground as the Hankin book, but
-more thoroughly, and in a more mathematical style, is *Lambda-Calculus and Combinators:
-an Introduction*, by J. Roger Hindley and Jonathan P. Seldin.)
+[[Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell]]
+
+## What is Functional Programming? ##
+
+Here's a [survey conducted at Microsoft](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141506) asking programmers what they understand "functional programming" to be. Don't take their responses to be authoritative... this is a just a "man in the street" (seat?) poll.
+
+Read more about the [uptake of Haskell](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html) among programmers in the street.
+-->
+
+## Recommended Books ##
+
+It's not *mandatory* to purchase these for the class. But they are good ways to get a more thorough and solid understanding of some of the more basic conceptual tools we'll be using. We especially recommend the first three of them.
+
+* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris
+Hankin, currently $18 paperback on
+[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300653).
* *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias
-Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992).
+Felleisen, currently $29 paperback on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992).
This is a classic text introducing the gentle art of programming, using the
functional programming language Scheme. Many people love this book, but it has
an unusual dialog format that is not to everybody's taste. **Of particular
a free sample chapter [at the MIT Press web page for the
book](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/).
-* *The Seasoned Schemer*, also by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $28
-on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/026256100X)
+* *The Seasoned Schemer*, also by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $29 paperback
+on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/026256100X). This is a sequel to The Little Schemer, and it focuses on mutation and continuations in Scheme. We will be covering those topics in the second half of the course.
-* *The Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, currently $27
+* *The Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, currently $31 paperback / $29 kindle
on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Little-MLer-Matthias-Felleisen/dp/026256114X).
-This covers some of the same introductory ground as The Little Schemer, but
-this time in ML. The dialect of ML used is SML, not OCaml, but there are only
-superficial syntactic differences between these languages.
+This covers much of the same introductory ground as The Little Schemer, but
+this time in a dialect of ML. It doesn't use OCaml, the dialect we'll be working with, but instead another dialect of ML called SML. The syntactic differences between these languages is slight.
+([Here's a translation manual between them](http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/sml-vs-ocaml.html).)
+Still, that does add an extra layer of interpretation, and you might as well just use The Little Schemer instead. Those of you who are already more comfortable with OCaml (or with Haskell) than with Scheme might consider working through this book instead of The Little Schemer; for the rest of you, or those of you who *want* practice with Scheme, go with The Little Schemer.
+
+* Another good book covering the same ground as the Hankin book, but
+more thoroughly, and in a more mathematical style, is *Lambda-Calculus and Combinators:
+an Introduction*, by J. Roger Hindley and Jonathan P. Seldin, currently $74 hardback / $65 kindle on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521898854).
+This book is substantial and though it doesn't presuppose any specific mathematical background knowledge, it will be a good choice only if you're already comfortable reading advanced math textbooks.
+If you choose to read both the Hankin book and this book, you'll notice the authors made some different
+terminological/notational choices. At first, this makes comprehension slightly slower,
+but in the long run it's helpful because it makes the arbitrariness of those choices more salient.
+* Another good book, covering some of the same ground as the Hankin, and the Hindley & Seldin, but delving deeper into typed lambda calculi, is *Types and Programming Languages*, by Benjamin Pierce, currently $77 hardback / $68 kindle on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091). This book has many examples in OCaml.
-##[[Schedule of Topics]]##
----
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