X-Git-Url: http://lambda.jimpryor.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lambda.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=index.mdwn;h=0ae6d5ead9d405fd96ad3012abe1671af27af073;hp=77dafc5a9eb77efe5cc00648a31fa3b8e730c769;hb=18e2c0f20d15c9f099fa5ae9571d6635dc2cd44b;hpb=27e3dd41f64101986da6d0d9f7943be6a32970d6 diff --git a/index.mdwn b/index.mdwn index 77dafc5a..0ae6d5ea 100644 --- a/index.mdwn +++ b/index.mdwn @@ -1,17 +1,189 @@ -Welcome to your new wiki. +# Seminar in Semantics / Philosophy of Language # -All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too. +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." + + +## 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. + + + +## 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. + +Philosphers and linguists tend to reuse the same familiar tools in +ever more (sometime spectacularly) creative ways. But when your only +hammer is classical logic, every problem looks like modus ponens. In +contrast, computer scientists have invested considerable ingenuity in +studying tool design, and have made remarkable progress. + +"Why shouldn't I reinvent some idea X for myself? It's intellectually +rewarding!" Yes it is, but it also takes time you might have better +spent elsewhere. After all, you can get anywhere you want to go by walking, but you can +accomplish more with a combination of walking and strategic subway +rides. + +More importantly, the idiosyncrasies of your particular +implementation may obscure what's fundamental to the idea you're +working with. Your implementation may be buggy in corner cases you +didn't think of; it may be incomplete and not trivial to generalize; its +connection to existing literature and neighboring issues may go +unnoticed. For all these reasons you're better off understanding the +state of the art. + +The theoretical tools we'll be introducing aren't very familiar to +everyday programmers, but they are prominent in academic computer science, +especially in the fields of functional programming and type theory. + +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 +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, +derivations) unfold in (for instance) time. The key analytic technique is to +form a static, order-independent model of a dynamic process. We'll be +discussing this in much more detail as the course proceeds. + +The logical systems we'll be looking at include: + +* the pure/untyped lambda calculus +* combinatorial logic +* the simply-typed lambda calculus +* polymorphic types with System F +* some discussion of dependent types +* if time permits, "indeterministic" or "preemptively parallel" computation and linear logic + + + + +## Who Can Participate? ## + +The course will not presume previous experience with programming. We +will, however, discuss concepts embodied in specific programming +languages, and we will encourage experimentation with running, +modifying, and writing computer programs. -Sample content. +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; 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. -More content added by git. +It hasn't yet been decided whether this course counts for satisfying the logic requirement for +Philosophy PhD students. -CB:Here's some content added by me using git. +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. -Enabled "lockedit" plugin: testing that admins can still edit pages. -CB: content added by editing the wiki page using a browser. +## Recommended Software ## + +During the course, we'll be encouraging you to try out various things in Scheme +and Caml, which are prominent *functional programming languages*. We'll explain +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 +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 +their fundamentals, but have slightly different extensions and interact with +the operating system differently. One major implementation used to be called +PLT Scheme, and has just in the past few weeks changed their name to Racket. +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.) + +* **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, +OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France. + +* Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third +prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a +lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. Its surface syntax +differs from Caml, and there are various important things one can do in +each of Haskell and Caml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the +other. But these languages also have a lot in common, and if you're +familiar with one of them, it's not difficult to move between it and the +other. + +[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]] + +[[Using the programming languages]] + +[[Family tree of functional programming languages]] + +## Recommended Books ## + +* *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). + +* (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. 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.) + + +* *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias +Felleisen, currently $23 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 +interest for this course** is the explanation of the Y combinator, available as +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 Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, currently $27 +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. [Here's a translation +manual between them](http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/sml-vs-ocaml.html). + +##[[Schedule of Topics]]## + +##[[Lecture Notes]]## + +##[[Offsite Reading]]## + +There's lots of links here already to tutorials and encyclopedia entries about many of the notions we'll be dealing with. + ---- +All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too. + This wiki is powered by [[ikiwiki]].