Tibor Vámos - Böcker

This is the result of the author's extensive practical experience: a decade in computer process control using large scale systems, another decade in machine pattern-recognition for vision systems, and nearly a decade dealing with artificial intelligence and expert systems. These real-life projects have taught Vámos a critical appreciation of, and respect for, both abstract theory and the practical methodology that grows out of—and, in turn, shapes—those theories. Machine representation means a level of formalization that can be expressed by the instruments of mathematics, whereas programming is not more and not less than a special linguistic translation of these mathematical formulae. How these all are related and controlled is a most practical philosophical and computation professional task. Wide experience in the practical fields of computer science, and the research of the underlying theoretical issues have led Vámos to the development of the attitude and activity of constructive skepticism.

This book is an essay on relevant problems of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) related to computer science. It draws a continuous line between the earliest scientific approaches of epistemology, starting with the Greek Classics and the recent practical and theoretical problems of computer modelling, and by that the appropriate application of computers to our present problems. Uncertainty, logic and language are the key issues of this road leading to some new aspects of cognitive psychology and unification of the different results for a modelling procedure. The book is not a textbook but a critical survey of usual and advertised methods with an evaluation of them from the point of view of their applicability, reliability and limits. Probability, Bayesian, Dempster-Shafer, fuzzy and other approaches are treated in this way in uncertainty, different worlds' concepts, non-monotonic logic and other methods and views in logic. The emphasis in linguistics is put on the meta concept, and in cognitive applications of the pattern concept.Written mostly in an entertaining style, this book provides a more palatable reading of a profound subject.

This book is an essay on relevant problems of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) related to computer science. It draws a continuous line between the earliest scientific approaches of epistemology, starting with the Greek Classics and the recent practical and theoretical problems of computer modelling, and by that the appropriate application of computers to our present problems. Uncertainty, logic and language are the key issues of this road leading to some new aspects of cognitive psychology and unification of the different results for a modelling procedure. The book is not a textbook but a critical survey of usual and advertised methods with an evaluation of them from the point of view of their applicability, reliability and limits. Probability, Bayesian, Dempster-Shafer, fuzzy and other approaches are treated in this way in uncertainty, different worlds' concepts, non-monotonic logic and other methods and views in logic. The emphasis in linguistics is put on the meta concept, and in cognitive applications of the pattern concept.Written mostly in an entertaining style, this book provides a more palatable reading of a profound subject.