SYLLABUS / ACHIEVEMENT REQUIREMENTS for INF5020, AUTUMN 2004

(PENSUM)

NOTE that this list may change during the term.
Please do follow courses and course web pages for possible changes.

VERY IMPORTANT NOTE: The core of the curriculum is the slides used in the lectures in the first half, and the seminar presentations/discussions in the second half. These indicate also the relative importance of the different subjects in the curriculum.

The main bulk of the course is covered by the following textbook:

?     Luciano Floridi (Ed.)
The Blackwell Guide to Philosophy of Computing and Information, Blackwell Publishing, August 2003. ISBN 0-631-22918-3 (hardcover) and 0-631-22919-1 (paperback).

Following articles are part of the course syllabus:

?     ?Unified Field Theory of Design? by Nathan Shedroff from a book of collected papers called Information Design (edited by Robert Jacobson), MIT Press, 1999.

?     ?Chaos, Order and Sense-Making by Brenda Dervin? from the same book, i.e., Information Design (edited by Robert Jacobson), MIT Press, 1999.

?     The introductory article ?Two Approaches to Philosophy of Information? by Luciano Floridi from the special issue of the Minds and Machines journal, November 2003, 13(4), Kluwer.

?     Article named ?The Informational Turn in Philosophy? in the same issue of Minds and Machines, November 2003, 13(4), Kluwer.

?     Article named ?Information for Perception and Information Processing? in the same issue of Minds and Machines, November 2003, 13(4), Kluwer.

NOTE:

?    The first two articles (from the Information Design book) can be borrowed from the instructors. You can also check here for the availability of the Information Design book on BIBSYS. If you are interested in purchasing the Information Design book, see its Web-page at MIT press or at amazon.com.

?    For the last three articles: You should have full access to the November 2003 issue of Minds and Machines here. Ask the instructors if you cannot get hold of the articles.

READING LIST for INF5020, AUTUMN 2004

(PENSUM)

In addition, there will be themes (or shorter summaries) taken form relevant parts of some books/articles with additions/interpretations by the instructors. These will be embedded in the ?slideware? or course notes, but you may want to find and read the books/articles themselves. Currently, these are:

?     Mark Turner, ?The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language?, Oxford University Press, 1996. In the course, we shall include a summary of the main idea in the book, which we call the ?parable-conjecture?.

?     Keith Devlin, ?Math's Gene?, Basic Books, 2000. A summary of the ?universal grammar? is what we will take from this book as a basis for discussion.

?     Stephen C. Levinson, ?Pragmatics?, Cambridge University Press, 1983. We shall use the essence of linguistic pragmatics, definitions/examples of implicature, maxims etc. from this book.

?     Umberto Eco, ?Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language?, MacMillan Press, 1984. We shall this book to get an idea about how semiotics relates to language and information by looking very briefly at a summary of the essence and subject of semiotics, work on metaphors to be contrasted with maxims and implicature etc.

?     Ron Weber, ?Ontological Foundations of Information Systems?, Coopers & Lybrand, Melbourne 1997. In relation to what ontology is in a philosophical sense, we shall look at its use in Ron Weber?s interpretation of how ontology applies to information and information ?representation? systems.

?     George Lakoff, ?Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind?, University of Chicago Press, 1987. Categorization/classification seems to be important in human conceptualization of information and also in representation of information in (for example) a computer science context. But there are at least two major approaches to categorization: the classical approach and the modern view of categorization. We shall use this book as our main source in comparing classical categorization vs. Eleanor Rosch?s typicality-implied categorization theories and their implications.

?     Some of the instructors? own works (especially related to visual information) shall also be embedded in the lectures. See the Journal of Visual Languages and Computing (JVLC) paper, information visualization (IEEE IV 2004) paper and International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA 2004) paper.?

NOTE:

If you want to contribute to the syllabus or the reading list, or have any comments/suggestions, please do tell us!