Keith Douglas' Web Page

About me Find out who I am and what I do.
My resumé A copy of my resumé and other documentation about my education and work experience for employers and the curious.
Reviews, theses, articles, presentations A collection of papers from my work, categorized and annotated.
Current research projects What I am currently working on, including some non-research material.
Interesting people People professionally "connected" to me in some way.
Interesting organizations Organizations I am "connected" to. (Some rather loosely.)
Intellectual/professional influences Influences on my work, including an organization chart. Here you can also buy many good books on philosophy and other subjects via amazon.com. I have included brief reviews of hundreds of books.
Professional resources Research sources, amazon.com associates programs, etc.
What is the philosophy of computing? A brief introduction to my primary professional interest.
My intellectual heroes A partial list of important people. Limited to the dead.
My educational philosophy As a sometime teacher I've developed one. Includes book resources.

References

The following is a list of every book cited in all of my papers that is available on amazon.com. Please make use of it if you wish to learn from the same places I did or to criticize the ideas I work with to form my own, or just for amusement or fun. Thanks! I've provided some one-line reviews to help you decide which to order and read. (Note to friends: use my wishlist to purchase for me, not this page.)


One of the standard collections of Aristotle's works in English.

Three works on metaphysics by one of the more interesting thinkers in this field. I have criticized Armstrong's philosophy of set theory on my papers page.

While I have not studied this work in detail, it emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the metaphysics implicit in our language from the metaphysics one can obtain through other sources (e.g. scientific research).

A detailed look at the philosophy of quantum field theory.

A book on complexity theory. Cited by Hava Siegelmann's monograph on neural networks (see later) to support some of her claims.

Where physics meets the philosophy of time ...

I have only made use of one paper in here: Robin Gandy's about generalizing Turing machines. Wilfried Sieg has since extended and refined this work. Avoids the handwaving about parallelism often found in some discussions of computability.

One of the excellent Schaum's Outlines, this time on group theory.

A well known book on the semantics and metaphysics of events. Discusses the question of event mereology though not to my satisfaction.

I learned elementary physics from an earlier edition of this work. That edition, at least, has the interesting quirk that special relativity is presented semiaxiomatically and the other portions not: as if the postulates of classical mechanics (say) are any more or less removed from ordinary experience.

Sociology of religion looks at Canada.

A discussion of the relationship between art and engineering. I learned about this work from one of Carl Mitcham's on the philosophy of technology.

A classic in recursion theory and logic. Discusses the "Zeus machine" (accelerated Turing machine) briefly.

Collection of some important papers on causation, though rather dated these days (it was printed 1976 or so).

A one volume treatise on the history of chemistry. Discusses chemical ideas more than chemical practice, though this is given attention too.

Bunge was one of my professors while I was an undergraduate. This is a third edition of his first book. Defends explicitly (for the first time I know of) a thesis of broad determinism, explaining why causation is simply a limiting case of determinism in this general sense. Also discusses how quantum mechanics is both causal and acausal in its various aspects and many other important topics. Seems to be cited more than understood.

An edited collection of papers from the meeting that founded the society that bears this volume's name. Even defends exact philosophy within the history of philosophy, a technique to some extent picked up by such folks as Edward Zalta.

One of Bunge's books on the philosophy of physics. Includes a discussion of axiomatics, the role of philosophy in foundations work, interpretations of quantum mechanics, etc.

The monumental Treatise on Basic Philosophy comes in 8 volumes. If you want to read just one, read volume 3, The Furniture of the World, and never again complain that metaphysics is all fuzzyheaded thinking. Computing professionals take note: this is one of the documents that founded the Wand-Weber model of understanding information systems.

For philosophers the subject of this book should be obvious. Defends emergent materialism.

Another book on emergent materialism, this time more general. Also includes a reprint of an amusing dialogue using Berkeley's characters. This time Hylas wins the debate!

Part of this book can be viewed as a précis of the Treatise as applied to social science. Also includes specific investigations of many topical philosophical controversies as related to social science (realism/antirealism; holism/reductionism/systemism etc.) Also includes an interesting appendix on futility theory. If you're fond of exactness (as I am) and yet skeptical of neoclassical economics, etc. read this appendix!

Two volumes on the general philosophy of science. Includes a chapter on measurement and even one on concept formation. A reprint of the 1967 Scientific Research with some additional material. Unfortunately (at least in the printing I have) marred with what look like "scan-os".

The "second half" to Finding Philosophy in Social Science. Includes a discussion of several sociotechnologies (law, normative economics, action theory, mangement).

A idiosyncratic dictionary of philosophy. On vacation in 1999 I wrote an extended commentary on many of the entries: I have been meaning to type this up. Includes several entries to "eschew solemnity", as Bunge puts it. Ever wanted to know the relationship between Dasein (being-there) and Daschwein (pig-there)? That's in here, as well as "event", "relation", "time", "dot dot dot" and many others.

A generalized followup to The Mind-Body Problem. A few of Bunge's criticisms of computationalism are unfounded.

A later edition of where I learned general biology from. This tome is so massive that I have not even read it all yet, despite it being nearly 10 years since I acquired it. Outstanding and appropriate illustrations.

One of my many logic books. Geared towards mathematicians.

A collection on the subject indicated in the title.

Carnap's famous book on the foundations of probability theory and various interpretations thereof.

I have responded to one paper in this collection: Spinello's on copyright law.

Who would have thought that these days there would be a secular Leibnizian style panpsychist? Also includes a few brief remarks pertaining to the philosophy of computing.

One of the places I learned C from.



Paul Churchland's semi-popularization about neuroscience and philosophy.

Collection of papers by the Churchlands. (See my amazon.com review for more.)

Pat Churchland teams up with Terence Sejnowski. The result is half philosophy and half neuroscience. Good luck trying to seperate the two: I don't see any clear line, and there shouldn't be one, after all. Also includes an interesting discussion of what computers are.

Pat Churchland's latest: an actual textbook in neurophilosophy!

Some computer architecture and assembly language programming. Includes the all-important discussion of representation in standard computers.

Sober, sensible, scholarly sociology of science.

The book on algorithms.

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