Related papers: Quantum randomness and free will
Among several possibilities for what reality could be like in view of the empirical facts of quantum mechanics, one is provided by theories of spontaneous wave function collapse, the best known of which is the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW)…
Recent philosophical discussions about metaphysical indeterminacy have been substantiated with the idea that quantum mechanics, one of the most successful physical theories in the history of science, provides explicit instances of worldly…
When most people think of physics, they think of what they learned in high school physics: that the world is fundamentally predictable. Given the position and velocity of a particle in space, it should be possible to predict its position at…
We describe how physical universes that are composed of gauge and gravitationally interacting bosonic and fermionic quantum fields arise from the generic discrete distribution of many quantifiable properties of arbitrary static entities.…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…
The predictions of quantum mechanics are probabilistic. Quantum probabilities are extracted using a postulate of the theory called the Born rule, the status of which is central to the "measurement problem" of quantum mechanics. Efforts to…
We argue that quantum mechanics makes sense without such controversial postulates as the wave function collapse, the quantum probability rule and the observable postulate. We only need the existence of a wave function as a representation of…
According to the subjective Bayesian interpretation of quantum theory (QBism), quantum mechanics is a tool that an agent would be wise to use when making bets about natural phenomena. In particular, the Born rule is understood to be a…
It is argued that the so-called holographic principle will obstruct attempts to produce physically realistic models for the unification of general relativity with quantum mechanics, unless determinism in the latter is restored. The notion…
Realist, no-collapse interpretations of quantum mechanics, such as Everett's, face the probability problem: how to justify the norm-squared (Born) rule from the wavefunction alone. While any basis-independent measure can only be…
There are many examples of human decision making which cannot be modeled by classical probabilistic and logic models, on which the current AI systems are based. Hence the need for a modeling framework which can enable intelligent systems to…
This pseudo-paper consists of excerpts drawn from two of my quantum-email samizdats. Section 1 draws a picture of a physical world whose essence is ``Darwinism all the way down.'' Section 2 outlines how quantum theory should be viewed in…
We present a contextualist statistical realistic model for quantum-like representations in physics, cognitive science and psychology. We apply this model to describe cognitive experiments to check quantum-like structures of mental…
Quantum theory can be viewed as a generalization of classical probability theory, but the analogy as it has been developed so far is not complete. Whereas the manner in which inferences are made in classical probability theory is…
Quantum mechanics has lacked a widely recognized interpretation since its birth. Many of these are still under consideration because interpretations are tough or impossible to disprove experimentally. We show how to distinguish…
Are minds subject to laws of physics? Are the laws of physics computable? Are conscious thought processes computable? Currently there is little agreement as to what are the right answers to these questions. Penrose goes one step further and…
Quantum mechanics traditionally places the observer outside of the system being studied and employs the Born interpretation. In this and related papers the observer is placed inside the system. To accomplish this, special rules are required…
In a previous paper (arXiv:1008.3661v1[quant-ph] 21 Aug 2010), we have given a purely logical proof of the Conway and Kochen Free Will theorem in QM: the freedom of the observer implies the freedom of the observed particle. Here we show…
Fast moving classical variables can generate quantum mechanical behavior. We demonstrate how this can happen in a model. The key point is that in classically (ontologically) evolving systems one can still define a conserved quantum energy.…