Related papers: God may not play dice, but human observers surely …
Founding our analysis on the Geneva-Brussels approach to the foundations of physics, we provide a clarification and classification of the key concept of observation. An entity can be observed with or without a scope. In the second case, the…
This paper presents and philosophically assesses three types of results on the observational equivalence of continuous-time measure-theoretic deterministic and indeterministic descriptions. The first results establish observational…
Physical theories must stem from observation. The possibility that perceived events are simulated, not real, raises a crucial dilemma about the credibility of known physics, known as the simulation hypothesis. To analyze this hypothesis in…
This paper argues that the traditional opposition between determinism and indeterminism in physics is representational rather than ontological. Deterministic-stochastic dualities are available in principle, and arise in a non-contrived way…
As physics searches for invariants in observations, this paper looks for invariants of probabilistic observation without assuming physical structure. Structure emerges from the basic assumption of science that new information shall lead to…
We introduce games with probabilistic uncertainty, a natural model for controller synthesis in which the controller observes the state of the system through imprecise sensors that provide correct information about the current state with a…
A central paradigm behind process semantics based on observability and testing is that the exact moment of occurring of an internal nondeterministic choice is unobservable. It is natural, therefore, for this property to hold when the…
One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…
The central question of this paper is: are deterministic and indeterministic descriptions observationally equivalent in the sense that they give the same predictions? I tackle this question for measure-theoretic deterministic systems and…
We attempt to make superdeterminism more intuitive, notably by simulating a deterministic model system, a billiard game. In this system an initial 'bang' correlates all events, just as in the superdeterministic universe. We introduce the…
An actual infinity of colliding balls can be in a configuration in which the laws of mechanics lead to logical inconsistency. It is argued that one should therefore limit the domain of these laws to a finite, or only a potentially infinite…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
In this PhD thesis the ancient question of determinism ('Does every event have a cause ?') will be re-examined. In the philosophy of science and physics communities the orthodox position states that the physical world is indeterministic:…
In this work, we consider a binary hypothesis testing problem involving a group of human decision-makers. Due to the nature of human behavior, each human decision-maker observes the phenomenon of interest sequentially up to a random length…
I discuss some of the main interpretations given to explain the indeterministic nature of quantum measurements and show that all has some loopholes in one corner or another. I propose an alternative interpretation based on the notion of…
A property of a system is called actual, if the observation of the test that pertains to that property, yields an affirmation with certainty. We formalize the act of observation by assuming that the outcome correlates with the state of the…
In a recent paper [1], it has been claimed that the outcomes of a quantum coin toss which is idealized as an infinite binary sequence is 1-random. We also defend the correctness of this claim and assert that the outcomes of quantum…
The recognition of the agency of the knower has enormously enriched our understanding of knowledge production. There is a growing realization that what we know about how we know affects our interpretation of reality. This realization…
We study the process of observation (measurement), within the framework of a `perspectival' (`relational', `relative state') version of the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics. We show that if we assume certain features of…
It is a widespread belief that results like G\"odel's incompleteness theorems or the intrinsic randomness of quantum mechanics represent fundamental limitations to humanity's strive for scientific knowledge. As the argument goes, there are…