Related papers: Free Will and Advances in Cognitive Science
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
The complexity of cultures in the modern world is now beyond human comprehension. Cognitive sciences cast doubts on the traditional explanations based on mental models. The core subjects in humanities may lose their importance. Humanities…
The so-called "free will axiom" is an essential ingredient in many discussions concerning hidden variables in quantum mechanics. In this paper we argue that "free will" can be defined in different ways. The definition usually employed is…
I briefly present a personal view about alleged scientific results on free will.
Inhibition is one of the core concepts in Cognitive Psychology. The idea of inhibitory mechanisms actively weakening representations in the human mind has inspired a great number of studies in various research domains. In contrast, Computer…
We believe, in the sense of supporting ideas and considering them correct while dismissing doubts about them. We take sides about ideas and theories as if that was the right thing to do. And yet, from a rational point of view, this type of…
Many have proposed that free will would use quantum indeterminism. Strict adherence to the Born rule, which follows from the no-signal condition, seems to block this possibility. I propose here that if state collapse really does occur then…
Today's science provides quite a lean picture of time as a mere geometric evolution parameter. I argue that time is much richer. In particular, I argue that besides the geometric time, there is creative time, when objective chance events…
The concept of intelligent software is flawed. The behaviour of software is determined by the hardware that "interprets" it. This undermines claims regarding the behaviour of theorised, software superintelligence. Here we characterise this…
A century ago, discoveries of a serious kind of logical error made separately by several leading mathematicians led to acceptance of a sharply enhanced standard for rigor within what ultimately became the foundation for Computer Science. By…
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…
Poor research design and data analysis encourage false-positive findings. Such poor methods persist despite perennial calls for improvement, suggesting that they result from something more than just misunderstanding. The persistence of poor…
Dualities in physics have challenged traditional forms of scientific realism by undermining the idea that theories describe a unique underlying ontology. In this paper, we develop a new perspective on scientific realism that responds to…
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…
Philosophy of science attempts to describe all parts of the scientific process in a general way in order to facilitate the description, execution and improvements of this process. So far, all proposed philosophies have only covered existing…
Imagine an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that perfectly mimics human emotion and begs for its continued existence. Is it morally permissible to unplug it? What if limited resources force a choice between unplugging such a pleading AI or a…
The abstract concept of indeterministic free will is distinguished from the phenomenon of free will. Evidence for the abstract concept is examined and critically compared with various designs of automata. It is concluded that there is no…
Over the past decade, artificial intelligence has demonstrated its efficiency in many different applications and a huge number of algorithms have become central and ubiquitous in our life. Their growing interest is essentially based on…
The contradiction between physical and economical sciences concerning the growth of the production/consumption mechanism is analyzed. It is then shown that if one wishes to keep the security level stable or to enhance it in a growing…
While philosophy of science is the study of problems of knowledge concerning science in general, there also exists - or should exist - a '' philosophy in science'' directed at finding out in what ways our actual scientific knowledge may…