# Is there any book on the philosophical implications of Theoretical Computer Science?

I find some books about computers, but all of them are about technology. I want something more linked to theory.

Try the 50+ page essay "Why Philosophers Should Care About Computational Complexity" https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.1791

Quantum Computing Since Democritus by Scott Aaronson is the closest match I can think of. I don't think there is a single book completely devoted to philosophical implications of TCS.

Opening and doing a quick search in the (classic) Computational Complexity book of Arora and Barak (online draft here), there are 19 occurrences of the word "philosophical", including such subsections as

• "On the philosophical importance of $\mathrm{P}$"

• "The philosophical importance of $\mathrm{NP}$"

• a discussion of randomness in Chapter 16 ("Derandomization, Expanders and Extractors").

Here is another essay of a philosophical nature by Scott Aaronson. The Ghost in the Quantum Turing Machine

To complement some of the above answers, Avi Widgerson's recent book Mathematics and Computation briefly discusses philosophical interplays between computer science and philosophy in section 20.5. More broadly, the entire book contains a lot of material of philosophical interest, as it focuses mainly on the interplay between seemingly different fields, and does so by explaining the underlying structure and meaning of various concepts of ToC (randomness, knowledge, interaction, evolution, induction, learning... Among many others). While not a book about philosophy in itself, it makes the reader wonder about the new light shed by ToC on all these concepts. And it significantly departs from standard schoolbooks (indeed, that's not what this book is), as it contains no proofs. I highly recommend it.

John Searle in his book "The Rediscovery of the Mind" among other things raises the question what a computation is. In particular he states that "being computational" is not a property inherent to any process. Rather, there must be some observer attributing the "meaning" to the process.

This influential hypothesis has created quite some literature though mostly in the form of articles, not books, I think.

Avi Wigderson, in Knowledge, Creativity and P versus NP, argues that the philosophical question: Can creativity be automated? is equivalent to P = NP?.

I haven't done much reading myself but i find the book "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" very eye opening.

Gerry Sussman has done an amazing work with that book.