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.
I discuss this book in chapter 2 of my MA thesis.

Another foundational document in the mathematics and philosophy of probability.

Another starting point for my MA thesis.

The Blackwell companions are like single volumes of a giant philosophy encyclopedia. This volume is about metaphysics.

A collection of important papers in metaphysics, including "Yes, Virginia, there is a real world."

The standard reference for the preSocratics in English.

See my review on amazon.com.

Reprint of another classic text in foundations of mathematics. Includes a very careful discussion of what is normally called the Church-Turing Thesis.

Knuth's classic textbook/monograph series in programming, algorithms and data structures.

Two outstanding paper collections on the foundations of neuroscience.

See my amazon.com review.

Nicholas Pippenger assigned this in his introductory theory of computation class at UBC. I like its presentation of automata - very "visualizable." It also got me thinking more about metaphysics of computation.

See my amazon.com review of this classic.

Laidler's book not only contains detailed and interesting histories of many scientific and technological developments but also discusses topics from the philosophy of science and technology in an abbreviated but fair fashion. (However, I do not always agree with the conclusions he reaches.)

Interesting ideas but very sketchily developed.

I have only used part of this volume and cannot comment generally.

Leibniz' classic, in the original French.

My friend Harvey recommended this book to me years ago. A whimsical look at particle physics.

A book concerning some of the work of Davidson.

Three books by a metateacher of mine - Levi was the teacher of one of my teachers at CMU, Horacio Arlo-Costa. The books are about epistemology and decision theory.

See my review on amazon.com.

An important book in contemporary metaphysics, it defends a radical form of modal realism.

Lewontin has important things to say in this book that should be heeded. Unfortunately, they are buried within a mount of pomo-pronouncements that do not help his case. I also note that his claim that there are no known behavioural effects of genetic conditions is simply false, as his own textbook of genetics will tell you.

Nidditch's standard edition of Locke's influential and important work of early modern thought. Locke is right about one thing for sure: with the "incomparable Mr. Newton" around, we'd better start rethinking things!

Another important book on the metaphysics of events.

More metaphysics.

Our source of knowledge of much of the philosophy of Epicurus. This poem on natural philosophy inspired me.

One of my textbooks from my undergraduate days.

Leibniz' famous principle of sufficient reason has a long history. Here is some of it discussed.

Dated now, this is where I first learned about event-driven programming.

Influential work in cognitive science with many details obsolete now. However, made me realize that at least in the case of some systems, Fodor's old question "what else but computation?" is right on the money.

Another book by a teacher of mine. Storrs McCall's cosmology is my second favourite (to Vic Stenger's - see below), but I am not convinced it is consistent with general relativity.

Basic textbook on cognitve psychology.

Yet more metaphysics; the second book is a collection of papers.

A history of atomism.

Tim Merrett assigned part of this text in his course on file systems. Very challenging and detailed.

Merton's classic.

A book which seems to fall under the contemporary view that social and psychological studies are really forms of literature studies.

See my amazon.com review.

I've only glanced through this to see what it says about Wittgenstein and Turing, but it is well regarded by some.

Pop sociobiology.

See my response in my paper on HCI.

Another well-intentioned and well-written book on the aesthetics of computing. Unfortunately it, again, is not developed enough for my tastes.

Introductory psychology book that I use. Nothing special except many quotations.

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