Related papers: Determinism without causality
Causality never gained the status of a "law" or "principle" in physics. Some recent literature even popularized the false idea that causality is a notion that should be banned from theory. Such misconception relies on an alleged…
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,…
Most traditional models of uncertainty have focused on the associational relationship among variables as captured by conditional dependence. In order to successfully manage intelligent systems for decision making, however, we must be able…
Discussions on causal relations in real life often consider variables for which the definition of causality is unclear since the notion of interventions on the respective variables is obscure. Asking 'what qualifies an action for being an…
An approach is presented treating decision theory as a probabilistic theory based on quantum techniques. Accurate definitions are given and thorough analysis is accomplished for the quantum probabilities describing the choice between…
Causality is a non-obvious concept that is often considered to be related to temporality. In this paper we present a number of past and present approaches to the definition of temporality and causality from philosophical, physical, and…
In non relativistic physics it is assumed that both chronological ordering and causal ordering of events (telling whether there exists a causal relationship between two events or not) are absolute, observer independent properties. In…
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…
Quantum causality extends the conventional notion of fixed causal structure by allowing channels and operations to act in an indefinite causal order. The importance of such an indefinite causal order ranges from the foundational---e.g.…
Determinism is (roughly) the thesis that the past determines the future. But efforts to define it precisely have exposed deep methodological disagreements. Standard possible-worlds formulations of determinism presuppose an "agreement"…
We present a definition of cause and effect in terms of decision-theoretic primitives and thereby provide a principled foundation for causal reasoning. Our definition departs from the traditional view of causation in that causal assertions…
Moving beyond the dualistic view in AI where agent and environment are separated incurs new challenges for decision making, as calculation of expected utility is no longer straightforward. The non-dualistic decision theory literature is…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
The possibility of non-causal signal propagation is examined for various theories of dense matter. This investigation requires a discussion of definitions of causality, together with interpretations of spacetime position. Specific examples…
To date, there has been no experimental evidence that invalidates quantum theory. Yet it may only be an effective description of the world, in the same way that classical physics is an effective description of the quantum world. We ask…
The probabilistic predictions of quantum theory are conventionally obtained from a special probabilistic axiom. But that is unnecessary because all the practical consequences of such predictions follow from the remaining, non-probabilistic,…
Bell's theorem shows that the reasonable relativistic causal principle known as "local causality" is not compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. It is not possible maintain a satisfying causal principle of this type while…
The Principle of Sufficient Reason implies determinism. An explicit indeterministic quantum jump dynamics is constructed, which may be naturally transformed into a deterministic one. A consistent application of the Principle of Sufficient…
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…
It is argued that although quantum theory isn't an absolutely deterministic theory, it is partially deterministic. The approach followed here is in the framework of the standard (Copenhagen interpretation of) quantum mechanics without any…