Teaching code

4S009800

Credits

12

Coordinator

Roberto Giacobazzi

Language

Italian

Moodle Seminars 0

The teaching is organized as follows:

Learning outcomes

The course is included in the learning area on New Technologies and Data Management. The course aims at providing students with basic knowledge in computer science and statistical analysis concerning new technologies, to allow the operational management of fundamental tools such as technologies, digital systems and, data on which to set legal responses. The learning focuses both on the in-depth study of the basic mechanisms that govern the programming and functioning of the main computer and digital technologies used in society, in a way that is understandable to a jurist, with particular regard to the challenges they pose in terms of security, reliability, transparency, obsolescence, and the main methods of statistical analysis of data used by companies and institutions that are essential to make rational and informed legal choices.
At the end of the course, the student will have acquired the ability to understand the basic functioning of a computer system, its limits and its potential, with particular reference to SW systems and systems based on artificial intelligence. By applying the basic tools of statistics and probability theory in a methodologically rigorous way, the student will also acquire the ability to understand the mechanisms of selection and production of data and their implications in terms of treatment, analysis, and interpretation.
The student will acquire the ability to face and solve real problems in the professional context in which he/she will operate, with particular reference to computer systems for data management, systems designed to support decisions and problems related to the safety and reliability of these systems, problems related to the responsibility of the designer and user. He/she will also be able to render a correct interpretation of statistical information, identifying the limits, the criticalities and the potentialities that characterize the data he/she will have to analyze. He/she will be able to assess the impact of a computer system within a company or public or private body, or in communities and social networks, as well as to use statistical information to support the analysis and understanding of problems and the decisions that may result, in written and oral form, also through group work, written exercises, and the Problem Based Solving method (PBS), the solution of concrete issues, using the appropriate and specific disciplinary vocabulary, adopting the correct lines of reasoning and argumentation, making independent decisions. The teaching method used is functional to the continuous learning and updating of acquired knowledge.

Program

The course aims to give answers (certainly not definitive) to a fundamental question: What is the value of science in the contemporary debate? To tackle this problem, understand its scope and stimulate curiosity, we will study a specific case: computer science as information science. We will see how this "new" science was born and place it in the broader history of science, what are its epistemological foundations, its limits, its ambitions towards an artificial intelligence, and how this is placed in the economic, ethical, and social context.

Course content:
1) Logical-analytical reasoning and Philosophy: from Parmenides to Kant
2) Logical-analytical reasoning and Science: from Leibniz to the Vienna circle
3) Deduction and induction, Realism and constructivism;
4) From verificationism to falsificationism: scientific experience and theories;
5) Positivism and determinism: automata, machines, constructivism: from C. Babbage to A. Turing
6) The language and the specification: syntax and semantics: machines, languages, data, algorithms, compute
7) The limits of science and the calculable: the scientific method, computational thinking: substitutability, falsifiability, objectification of information
7) The science of limits: scientific truth, computational linguistics and Artificial Intelligence
8) Ethics and philosophy of digital

DIDACTIC METHODS
The teaching methods consist of frontal lessons which will be divided into two moments:
1) general part: this is an introduction to the philosophy of "contemporary science", with the presentation of some important moments of scientific development, suitable for the transmission of the basic historical-conceptual notions regarding the philosophy of science and epistemology. In this general part we will follow the order of the topics of the first of the adopted texts, History of the philosophy of science by Oldroyd, with in addition anthological material that will be distributed in class;
2) monographic part: we will study the philosophical bases of computer science as information science, its genesis within the debate on the foundations of mathematics of the early 1900s, its history, and its current evolution, yet focusing on epistemological aspects, ethical and social aspects of this "new" science.

The lectures also make use of slides, in order to make learning clearer and more immediate and stimulate the active participation of students. In this regard, students are encouraged to carry out seminar activities regarding topics agreed with the teacher and related to the program of the course: these seminar activities will be recognized during the exam. An individual reception service is also available throughout the academic year at the teacher's office, at the times indicated on the web pages of the course.
At the first lesson, students will receive the complete calendar of teaching activities with the dates and topics covered in the lessons for which the timetable and classroom are provided. Any suspension of lessons by the teacher for academic reasons will be promptly communicated both in the classroom and on the website or other platforms agreed with the students.

Bibliography

Examination Methods

Written exam and oral exam with presentation of a given topic in the focus groups.