Overview

This course is available with a year in industry, usually taken after your second year.

Our combined Computer Science and Philosophy course brings together two disciplines with close intellectual affinities. Understanding what to do with technology, and why, is as important as doing it. Studying both Computer Science and Philosophy will help you to link the fundamentals of computing and technology with concepts of thought and mind.

We offer this course as a three-year Bachelors degree course, leading to a combined BSc in Computer Science and Philosophy. It is jointly taught and administered by the two leading UK departments of Computer Science and Philosophy at York.

In the first two years you will gain a good grounding in both Computer Science and Philosophy, with an equal number of credits in each department. In the third year, you can choose to specialise in both subjects in your areas of interest.

Course structure

First year

In the first year, you will study key Computer Science modules:

• Theory and Practice of Programming
• Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science
• Introduction to Computer Architecture

as well as core Philosophy modules:

• Reason and Argument
• Knowledge and Perception
• Metaphysics

You will also study for a cross-over module, entitled Can machines think?, which explores the connections between Computer Science and Philosophy through the work of Alan Turing and John Searle's Chinese room argument.

Second year

Your second year carries through the fundamentals of both subjects. In Computer Science, you will study:

• Principles of Programming Languages
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computability and Complexity
• Vision and Graphics

In Philosophy, your core pathway is Language and Mind, and you then choose to study one of the following:

• History of Philosophy
• Knowledge and Reality
• Practical Philosophy

Third year

In your third year, there is much more flexibility for you to choose the split between Computer Science and Philosophy. You can choose from a number of third year optional modules in Computer Science, as well as choosing some modules in Philosophy. You can also choose to undertake a Computer Science project, examples of which can be found in the Final year projects tab on this page.

Final year projects

You may choose to take a final year project in Computer Science. Examples of recent final year projects include:

• Machine learning of spontaneous gestures
• Creating believable avatar animations in Second Life
• Using the web to solve crossword puzzles
• occam-pi for multiple robotic systems
• Fuzzy reasoning with a neural network
• Interrogating Brooks' robot with Turing tests