Computer Science and Metaphysics: A Cross-Fertilization
This work addresses the challenge of uncovering complex metaphysical truths for philosophers and computer scientists, though it appears incremental in applying computational methods to a specific domain.
The paper tackles the problem of discovering philosophical insights in metaphysics using computational techniques, resulting in new findings that benefit both philosophy and computer science by demonstrating broader applicability of these methods.
Computational philosophy is the use of mechanized computational techniques to unearth philosophical insights that are either difficult or impossible to find using traditional philosophical methods. Computational metaphysics is computational philosophy with a focus on metaphysics. In this paper, we (a) develop results in modal metaphysics whose discovery was computer assisted, and (b) conclude that these results work not only to the obvious benefit of philosophy but also, less obviously, to the benefit of computer science, since the new computational techniques that led to these results may be more broadly applicable within computer science. The paper includes a description of our background methodology and how it evolved, and a discussion of our new results.