Dr. Albert Baker will present “Self-reference: Pondering the Implications of Gödel’s Proof” on April 8 at 3:00 pm.
Abstract of Talk:
This presentation on self-reference for human thought is a little more philosophical than our usual Friday afternoon graduate seminar. We are going to examine the implications of what Hofstadter refers to as a strange loop through at least a sketch of the proof of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem. Let’s spend an hour thinking about thinking. Are you a strange loop?
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Baker received his PhD in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University. He was a tenured Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Iowa State University where his research was focused on formal specification methods in software engineering. After leaving Iowa State, Dr. Baker held several positions in industry including as a Performance Test Lead at Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and as a Software Systems Architect at Nationwide Insurance. Dr. Baker is currently the Chair of the Department of Computer Science at UA Little Rock and an EAC Fellow in the Emerging Analytics Center. He is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), and works collaboratively with the Forge Institute, the Arkansas Center for Data Science, and the Arkansas Department of Education – Computer Science (CSforAR). Along with these steps in his professional career, Dr. Baker has cultivated an interest in the implications of recursion, self-reference and strange loops on thinking and mindfulness.
