Parts of computer science are like other sciences, parts are certainly like mathematics, and parts are also like engineering. Some people have argued that it is a natural science, others that it is an "artificial" science, still others that it is not a science but a branch of engineering, and so on. The answer to your question of whether computer science is a science depends, of course, on what is meant by "science" as well as what is meant by "computer science". What some people call "computer science" others call " computing science", "computer engineering ", "informatics", etc., each seeming to emphasize a different aspect of the discipline. And the question of what constitutes science (as opposed to, say, arts or humanities, on the one hand; "pseudoscience", on the other hand; and mathematics, on another hand) is a major topic in the philosophy of science. For some readings, by computer scientists as well as philosophers, on this question, take a look at some webpages I created on...

A few points need clarification before I can begin to answer your question. First, logic is not concerned with truth in the way that, say, the sciences are. Logic is concerned with relationships among sentences that have truth value, not with the actual truth values of the (atomic) sentences. The only apparent exception to this might be those sentences that "must" be true (tautologies) and those that "must" be false (contradictions). But tautologies and contradictions are not atomic sentences; they are "molecular" sentences, and what makes them tautologous or contradictory are the relationships among their atomic constituents. So, for instance, "(p & ¬p)" is a contradiction because—no matter what the actual truth value of p—the truth value of "(p & ¬p)" must be false (because of the truth tables for conjunction (&) and negation (¬)). Logic isn't concerned with p's actual truth value. Second, material implication (→) is not a "logical truth" nor is it even a sentence. It's a...

To prove a proposition is to derive it syntactically (that is, by "symbol manipulation" that is independent of the proposition's meaning). A "good" (or syntactically valid) derivation is one that begins with "first principles" (axioms) and derives other propositions from them (and from other validly derived propositions) by rules of infererence. Ideally, the rules of inference should be "truth preserving": If you start with true axioms, then all of the propositions derived from them by the rules should also be true. So, can you prove the axioms? If so, how? The uninteresting answer is, yes, you can prove them (in a technical, but trivial, sense) just by stating them, because they don't need to be derived by any rules from anything "more basic". So, how do you know that they are true? Well, truth and proof are two different things. Proof has to do with syntax, or valid derivation. Truth has to do with semantics, or meaning. Ideally, truth and proof should match up: A formal system ...

As with many other questions about color, you might find the discussion of emotional responses to colors in Hardin's classic book to be of interest: Hardin, C.L. (1993), Color for Philosophers: Unweaving the Rainbow, expanded edition (Indianapolis: Hackett)

Here's another contemporary philosopher you might want to look into: Galen Strawson-- "I take physicalism to be the view that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical. …[O]ne thing is absolutely clear. You're…not a real physicalist, if you deny the existence of the phenomenon whose existence is more certain than the existence of anything else: experience, 'consciousness', conscious experience, 'phenomenology', experiential 'what-it's-likeness', feeling, sensation, explicit conscious thought as we have it and know it at almost every waking moment. … [E]xperiential phenomena 'just are' physical, so that there is a lot more to neurons than physics and neurophysiology record…." (Strawson, Galen (2006), Realistic Monism , in A. Freeman (ed.), Consciousness and Its Place in Nature (Exeter: Imprint Academic))

A valuable paper on this topic, written by a psychologist, but with many discussions of Descartes's and Spinoza's views on these issues, is: Gilbert, Daniel T. (1991), "How Mental Systems Believe", American Psychologist 46(2) (February): 107-119 (online at http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/Gillbert%20(How%20Mental%20Systems%20Believe).PDF) Briefly, Gilbert argues that (his interpretation of) Spinoza's view that believing is part of understanding and that one must believe a proposition before one can reject it is psychologically more valid than (his interpretation of) Descartes's view that believing or disbelieving a proposition must psychologically and logically come after understanding it.

In addition to the previous replies, you might have in mind the notion of a "philosophical zombie": A person(?) indistinguishable in its appearance and behavior from a human but who has no "qualia" or "conscious (qualitative) experiences". Again, there's been lots written on this, but you might find the opposing views of Daniel Dennett and David Chalmers to be a good place to start. For Chalmers, who thinks that there can be such zombies (at least in theory), take a look at: Chalmers, David J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (New York: Oxford University Press). For Dennett (who thinks that there aren't any such things, or possibly that there are, namely, us!), take a look at: Dennett, Daniel C. (1991), Consciousness Explained (Boston: Little, Brown). (Other citations can be found under the heading "Philosophical Zombies" in my bibliography on computational theories of consciousness

Both philosophers and scientists (and, among scientists, both neuroscientists and cognitive scientists (and, among cognitive scientists, both computationally-oriented ones working in AI as well as non-computationally-oriented ones)) have been studying consciousness for many years recently. One main issue is your question of what it is. One way of phrasing that issue, due to the philosopher Ned Block, is as a distinction between "access" consciousness and "phenomenal" consciousness: The former, very roughly, is the kind of consciousness that is involved in information processing (and that, perhaps, can only be studied "externally" from a "third-person", objective, scientific perspective). The latter, again very roughly, is "experience", or "what it is like" to process information (and that, perhaps, can only be studied "internally" from a "first-person", subjective perspective). Figuring out exactly what "access" consciousness is has been called the "easy" problem of consciousness, because cognitive...

Here are a few of my favorites: Scholes, Robert (1968), Elements of Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press). [a very short book, really just a long article] Lewis, David (1978), "Truth in Fiction,'' American Philosophical Quarterly 15: 37-46. Castañeda, Hector-Neri (1979), "Fiction and Reality: Their Fundamental Connections; An Essay on the Ontology of Total Experience,'' Poetics 8: 31-62. Parsons, Terence (1975), "A Meinongian Analysis of Fictional Objects,'' Grazer Philosophische Studien 1: 73-86. plus, of course, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fiction/

I would hope that my askphilosophers.org colleagues might be able to answer your question better than I can with respect to the law and logic in philosophy , but I can try to give you some pointers to the literature on the law and logic in artificial intelligence . The first pointer is not so far removed from philosophy. My former colleague in the School of Law at the University at Buffalo, L. Thorne McCarty, applied deontic logic to legal issues, often citing the work of the philosopher Hector-Neri Castañeda. See, e.g., McCarty, L. Thorne (1983), "Permissions and Obligations", Proceedings of the 8th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-83; Karlsruhe, W. Germany) (Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann): 287-294. There is also a journal, Artificial Intelligence and Law , which occasionally has papers that you might find relevant.