Related papers: How does certainty enter into the mind?
The ability to make decisions based on data, with its inherent uncertainties and variability, is a complex and vital skill in the modern world. The need for such quantitative critical thinking occurs in many different contexts, and while it…
Here we deconstruct, and then in a reasoned way reconstruct, the concept of "entropy of a system," paying particular attention to where the randomness may be coming from. We start with the core concept of entropy as a COUNT associated with…
A complete model of the universe needs at least three parts: (1) a complete set of physical variables and dynamical laws for them, (2) the correct solution of the dynamical laws, and (3) the connection with conscious experience. In quantum…
Since quantum mechanics (QM) was formulated, many voices have claimed this to be the basis of free will in the human beings. Basically, they argue that free will is possible because there is an ontological indeterminism in the natural laws,…
Mathematics can serve many functions in physics. It can provide a computational system, reflect a physical idea, conveniently encode a rule, and so forth. A physics student thus has many different options for using mathematics in his…
How subjective experience (i.e., consciousness) arises out of objective material processes has been called the hard problem. The neuroscience of consciousness has set out to find the sufficient conditions for consciousness and theoretical…
This paper argues that, insofar as we doubt the bivalence of the Continuum Hypothesis or the truth of the Axiom of Choice, we should also doubt the consistency of third-order arithmetic, both the classical and intuitionistic versions.…
A growing effort in NLP aims to build datasets of human explanations. However, the term explanation encompasses a broad range of notions, each with different properties and ramifications. Our goal is to provide an overview of diverse types…
The ``Hard Problem" of consciousness refers to a long-standing enigma about how qualia emerge from physical processes in the brain. Building on insights from the development of non-Euclidean geometry, this paper seeks to present a…
We introduce a logic for reasoning about evidence, that essentially views evidence as a function from prior beliefs (before making an observation) to posterior beliefs (after making the observation). We provide a sound and complete…
This paper describes an entropy equation, but one that should be used for measuring energy and not information. In relation to the human brain therefore, both of these quantities can be used to represent the stored information. The human…
The idea that the brain is a probabilistic (Bayesian) inference machine, continuously trying to figure out the hidden causes of its inputs, has become very influential in cognitive (neuro)science over recent decades. Here I present a…
The human mind is known to be sensitive to complexity. For instance, the visual system reconstructs hidden parts of objects following a principle of maximum simplicity. We suggest here that higher cognitive processes, such as the selection…
The theoretical base for consciousness, in particular an explanation of how consciousness is defined by the brain, has long been sought by science. We propose a partial theory of consciousness as relations defined by typical data. The…
A succinct statement and justification of all the principles necessary to understand and evaluate interpretations of quantum mechanics is given. These principles provide strong constraints on interpretations. They imply the particle-like…
Partial descriptions of the Universe are presented in the form of linear equations considered in the free (full, super) Fock space. The universal properties of these equations are discussed. The closure problem caused by computational and…
This work aims to rigorously define the values of perception, prediction, communication, and common sense in decision making. The defined quantities are decision-theoretic, but have information-theoretic analogues, e.g., they share some…
Substantial efforts have been made in developing various Decision Modeling formalisms, both from industry and academia. A challenging problem is that of expressing decision knowledge in the context of incomplete knowledge. In such contexts,…
This explanation of what a brain is and does rests on informational first principles, because information theory, like its parent theory thermodynamics, is mathematically sacrosanct, itself resting on real-valued probability.Just as…
The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…