Ramón Casares (A Coruña, Spain, 1960)
ORCID: 0000-0003-4973-3128
I am an engineer by training, so let me explain why I am here.
I am curious as to how everything works. And, etymologically, a philosopher is someone who wants to know, that is, someone who is curious. Then, I guess, the reason to be a trained engineer is the reason to become a trained philosopher: to be curious.
So, why did I choose engineering instead of philosophy? I will not answer this, because I do not want to be rude. No, I am joking, sorry. I wanted to know everything about computers and about their limits, if any. And it seemed to me that, to reach that level of detail, engineering would be better than philosophy, or than physics.
I think I was right. Because of how curriculums were then (last 1970's) in Spain, I enrolled in Telecommunications Engineering. I was lucky because, besides learning how to build a Turing complete computer from logical gates and what is the halting problem precisely, I also learned in detail about digitization (Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem), about cybernetics (Wiener, Ashby, Klir), and about information (Shannon's theory of communication). Also, as both my master's thesis and my doctoral dissertation were on machine learning, I understood the "psychology" of learning machines accurately and, as a consequence, I went epistemologically from positivism to subjectivism.
Now I define myself as Post-Kantian, where Post refers to Emil. Basically, this is Kant subjectivism updated by Darwin and Turing. The (most) philosophical papers where I explain my ideas are:
- Subjectivist Propaganda
- The Intention of Intention
However, because of my peculiar background, my thinking is philosophically heterodox, and perhaps those who reason on the basis of other assumptions could find these papers alien. In particular, to grasp them entirely, one should fully comprehend Turing completeness. Since that is its main topic, I hope that many of you could find something interesting while reading:
- On Turing Completeness, or Why We Are So Many
Well, I have wasted a lot of words just to say that I am here to convince you that Turing completeness is the human essence. I am joking again, sorry, though this time only partially: I am here because I want to discuss my ideas with you.
