Related papers: The Principle of Sufficient Reason and Quantum Det…
A system of quantum reasoning for a closed system is developed by treating non-relativistic quantum mechanics as a stochastic theory. The sample space corresponds to a decomposition, as a sum of orthogonal projectors, of the identity…
Quantum control refers to our ability to manipulate quantum systems. This tutorial-style chapter focuses on the use of classical electromagnetic fields to steer the system dynamics. In this approach, the quantum nature of the control stems…
The quantum formalism is a ``measurement'' formalism--a phenomenological formalism describing certain macroscopic regularities. We argue that it can be regarded, and best be understood, as arising from Bohmian mechanics, which is what…
I argue that scientific determinism is not supported by facts, but results from the elegance of the mathematical language physicists use, in particular from the so-called real numbers and their infinite series of digits. Classical physics…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
Quantum mechanics is derived from the principle that the universe contain as much variety as possible, in the sense of maximizing the distinctiveness of each subsystem. The quantum state of a microscopic system is defined to correspond to…
Quantum mechanics is an extremely successful theory of nature and yet it lacks an intuitive axiomatization. In contrast, the special theory of relativity is well understood and is rooted into natural or experimentally justified postulates.…
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,…
In this work, we present a logical formalism for reasoning about quantum systems in finite dimension. Contrary to the usual approach in quantum logic, our formalism is based classical first-order logic, which allows us to use the tools of…
It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…
An analysis using classical stochastic processes is used to construct a consistent system of quantum counterfactual reasoning. When applied to a counterfactual version of Hardy's paradox, it shows that the probabilistic character of quantum…
There are several theories or processes which may underlie quantum mechanics and make it deterministic. Some references are given in the main text. Any such theory, plus a number of reasonable assumptions, implies the existence of what I…
It is argued that the conventional formulation of quantum mechanics is inadequate: the usual interpretation of the mathematical formalism in terms of the results of measurements cannot be applied to situations in which discontinuous…
Quantum superposition is often phrased as the ability to add state vectors. In practice, however, the physical quantity is a ray (a rank-one projector), so each input specifies only a projector and leaves a gauge freedom in the phases of…
Quantum theory expresses the observable relations between physical properties in terms of probabilities that depend on the specific context described by the "state" of a system. However, the laws of physics that emerge at the macroscopic…
The decidability of a logical system refers to the existence of an algorithm that can determine whether any given formula in that system is a theorem. In this paper, Harrop's lemma is used to prove the decidability of quantum modal logic.
Traditional cognitive science rests on a foundation of classical logic and probability theory. This foundation has been seriously challenged by several findings in experimental psychology on human decision making. Meanwhile, the formalism…
Essential elements of quantum theory are derived from an epistemic point of view, i.e., the viewpoint that thetheory has to do with what can be said about nature. This gives a relationship to statistical reasoning and to other areas of…
It is argued that realism and true randomness are fully compatible. Realistic true random events are acts of pure creation that obey strict laws, but do not necessarily satisfy Kolmogorov's axioms of probabilities. Realistic true randomness…