Daily Archives: January 27, 2004

In the past few months I have been challenged to defend computational philosophy, particularly philosophical modeling. Philosophical modeling, like scientific modeling, is a formalization process. However, instead of capturing real-world phenomena, philosophical modeling captures thought experiments. The process of encoding a thought experiment in a formal system is, itself, beneficial in the same way as standard conceptual analysis: hidden assumptions are unburied and seemingly simple ideas yield refined notions. But, in a way, encoding is more honest–the process is not satisfied until you reach a syntactic, algorithmic level of explicitness and, once our intuitions are encoded, further light may be […]