In his 1917 lecture Science as a Vocation, German sociologist Max Weber argued that questions of fact are separate from questions of value. Given certain pre-specified ends, the task of science is to find the best means of achieving them. But asking which ends to achieve in the first place is a question of values, properly answerable only by philosophy or religion. Weber was not alone on this point. Eminent scientists and mathematicians, such as Henri Poincaré, espoused similar views about the incommensurability of science and values. This post examines the (im)plausibility of extending this idea to data science.

I…

Philosophy for Data Scientists

In this post, we’ll continue where we left off in Part I. We’ll now focus on Derrida’s critique of structure (he’s a “post-structuralist”) and his account of context and signification. I’ll also give a brief refresher on some key historical figures (Nietzsche, Freud, and Marx) so that Derrida’s ideas can be placed in a more intelligible context. I’ll intersperse some interludes relating Derrida’s ideas to data and data science throughout.

This post will proceed in a Derridean fashion. Why? For at least a couple reasons. First, it’s likely the ideas will need time to sink in before they make any…

Philosophy for Data Scientists

Welcome back to Part III of our series on the philosophical foundations of AI. (In case you missed them: here are Part I and Part II)

This post explores questions of logic and structure (and their relation to meaning) and examines how myth and reason were separated by Plato and Aristotle (man as rational animal). From this time on, Western thinking assumed the purposes of poetry (i.e., the humanities) and science (i.e., natural philosophy) were orthogonal to one another. One deals in fiction, the other, truth. This distinction, maintained until today, led some twentieth century commentators to complain of a…

Philosophy for Data Scientists

In Part II of this series (see Part I here), we move from the biblical foundations of language and logic to more of the human, social side of things. You might say we are moving from the realm of syntax to semantics and pragmatics.

By syntax, I mean the way in which a given language defines what ‘counts’ as an expression in that language — its grammar, in other words. By semantics, I mean the way in which the expressions we deemed as ‘grammatical’ in our language ‘map’ to the world ‘out there’ (see the distinction between sense and reference…

Philosophy for Data Scientists

This series of posts explores the unfathomably complex intellectual landscape connecting the history of philosophy with modern AI. It’s an attempt at trying to understand impossibly broad questions like: How does language hook onto the world? What is the nature of truth? Of knowledge? How does something represent anything else? What are the conditions for persistence of personal identity over time?

Some slightly less impossibly broad, but still intimidatingly difficult questions I hope to touch on include: How did we go from logic, to computers, and then to AI and machine learning? What is the relation between statistics and logic…

Machine learning-backed personalized services have become a permanent fixture in our increasingly digital lives. Personalization relies on vast quantities of behavioral big data (BBD): the personal data generated when humans interact with apps, devices, and social networks. BBD are the essential raw material of our digital representations.

As life steadily moves online, the digital representations of persons take on legal and moral importance. Influential European legal theorists and philosophers have even written an Onlife Manifesto, shaping the discourse around what it means to be human in the digital age. …

In this post, I’d like to give some historical and political context to the recent ruling by the CJEU which invalidated the Privacy Shield program between the EU and the US. This deeper contextual understanding can help you to get a feel for the distinct cultural differences between Europe and the US on technology and privacy. I’ll close the article out by giving you some ideas about what to expect going forward in the absence of any transatlantic regulatory framework. …

Philosophy for Data Scientists

In this series of posts, I’d like to give a brief introduction to some key French thinkers who have had a disproportionately large impact on the humanities. In particular, I want to focus on humanistic/philosophical work aimed at understanding and interpreting the modern practice of data mining, including data collection and automated profiling. Due to the complexity of this work, however, I will need to approach it in several installments.

Among the philosophes whose ideas we will look at are Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Gilles Deleuze, Bruno Latour, Jean-Francois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida, Paul Ricoeur, and Jean Baudrillard. …