Related papers: Physical Logic
At the onset of quantum mechanics, it was argued that the new theory would entail a rejection of classical logic. The main arguments to support this claim come from the non-commutativity of quantum observables, which allegedly would…
We argue that a clear view on quantum mechanics is obtained by considering that the unicity of the macroscopic world is a fundamental postulate of physics, rather than an issue that must be mathematically justified or demonstrated. This…
A description of physical reality in which wholeness is the foundation is discussed along with the motivation for such an attempt. As a possible mathematical framework within which a physical theory based on wholeness may be expressed,…
I discuss a set of strong, but probabilistically intelligible, axioms from which one can {\em almost} derive the appratus of finite dimensional quantum theory. Stated informally, these require that systems appear completely classical as…
Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics has been criticized as incoherent and opportunistic, and based on doubtful philosophical premises. If so Bohr's influence, in the pre-war period of 1927-1939, is the harder to explain, and the…
Defeasible logic is a rule-based nonmonotonic logic, with both strict and defeasible rules, and a priority relation on rules. We show that inference in the propositional form of the logic can be performed in linear time. This contrasts…
It is argued that quantum mechanics follows naturally from the assumptions that there are no fundamental causal laws but only probabilities for physical processes that are constrained by symmetries, and reality is relational in the sense…
This work explores the connection between logical independence and the algebraic structure of quantum mechanics. Building on results by Brukner et al., it introduces the notion of \textit{onto-epistemic ignorance}: situations in which the…
Baroque questions of set-theoretic foundations are widely assumed to be irrelevant to physics. In this article, I demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. I show that the fundamental physical question of whether a theory is…
Without Niels Bohr, QBism would be nothing. But QBism is not Bohr. This paper attempts to show that, despite a popular misconception, QBism is no minor tweak to Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is something quite distinct.…
Quantum theory (QT) has been confirmed by numerous experiments, yet we still cannot fully grasp the meaning of the theory. As a consequence, the quantum world appears to us paradoxical. Here we shed new light on QT by being based on two…
We introduce an approach to the foundations of physics that is more in line with the foundations of mathematics. The idea is to examine current theories and find a set of starting physical assumptions that are sufficient to rederive them,…
Bohmian mechanics is the most naively obvious embedding imaginable of Schr\"odinger's equation into a completely coherent physical theory. It describes a world in which particles move in a highly non-Newtonian sort of way, one which may at…
A logical model of spatiotemporal structures is pictured as a succession of processes in time. One usual way to formalize time structure is to assume the global existence of time points and then collect some of them to form time intervals…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. The paper argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarly to…
Scientific theories need to be testable by observations, say using Bayes' theorem. A complete theory needs at least the three parts of dynamical laws for specified physical variables, the correct solution of the dynamical laws (boundary…
The logical inference approach to quantum theory, proposed earlier [Ann. Phys. 347 (2014) 45-73], is considered in a relativistic setting. It is shown that the Klein-Gordon equation for a massive, charged, and spinless particle derives from…
We present the quantum measurement problem as a serious physics problem. Serious because without a resolution, quantum theory is not complete, as it does not tell how one should - in principle - perform measurements. It is physical in the…
Argumentation is a non-monotonic process. This reflects the fact that argumentation involves uncertain information, and so new information can cause a change in the conclusions drawn. However, the base logic does not need to be…