Related papers: On the world cognizability
We argue that it is fundamentally impossible to recover information about quantum superpositions when a system has interacted with a sufficiently large number of degrees of freedom of the environment. This is due to the fact that gravity…
However, the observations encompassed by classical physics excludes the observer from the physical reality, yet the deep-down understandung of nature --{\it the quantum theory}-- can not avoid the intrusion of observer into the measurement…
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…
We discuss views about whether the universe can be rationally comprehended, starting with Plato, then Leibniz, and then the views of some distinguished scientists of the previous century. Based on this, we defend the thesis that…
A small quantum system within the gravitational field of a massive body will be entangled with the quantum degrees of freedom of the latter. Hence, the massive body acts as an environment, and it induces non-unitary dynamics, noise, and…
The universe is things which change and called events. The events are matter and field. A boundary divides a system to things and environment. The things belong to the environment have no significant effect on the things belong to the…
We present the foundations of a new emerging interpretation of quantum theory bearing wide-range implications. Physical basis of the interpretation is non-questionable yet relatively new--it relies on the different structures…
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of…
To demarcate the limits of experimental knowledge we probe the limits of what might be called an experiment. By appeal to examples of scientific practice from astrophysics and analogue gravity, we demonstrate that the reliability of…
Science is a crowning glory of the human spirit and its applications remain our best hope for social progress. But there are limitations to current science and perhaps to any science. The general mind-body problem is known to be intractable…
In Everett's many worlds interpretation, quantum measurements are considered to be decoherence events. If so, then inexact decoherence may allow large worlds to mangle the memory of observers in small worlds, creating a cutoff in observable…
Quantum Mechanics, the physical theory describing the microworld, represents one of science's greatest triumphs. It lies at the root of all modern digital technologies and offers unparalleled correspondence between prediction and…
We present a logical proof that computing machines, and by extension physical systems, can never be certain if they possess conscious awareness. This implies that human consciousness is associated with a violation of energy conservation. We…
Historically, appearance of the quantum theory led to a prevailing view that Nature is indeterministic. The arguments for the indeterminism and proposals for indeterministic and deterministic approaches are reviewed. These include collapse…
When we want to predict the future, we compute it from what we know about the present. Specifically, we take a mathematical representation of observed reality, plug it into some dynamical equations, and then map the time-evolved result back…
It is generally accepted that machines can replicate cognitive tasks performed by conscious agents as long as they are not based on the capacity of awareness. We consider several views on the nature of subjective awareness, which is…
We investigate the question of 'why customary macroscopic entities appear to us humans as they do, i.e. as bounded entities occupying space and persisting through time', starting from our knowledge of quantum theory, how it affects the…
Quantum cosmology is the quantum theory of the entire universe. Although strange at first sight, it is appropriate because (1) our world appears to be fundamentally quantum, (2) the classical description of gravity breaks down at…
In this work we scrutinize the deterministic nature of globally hyperbolic space-times from the point of view of an observer. We show that a space-time point $q \in M$ that lies to the future of an observer at $p \in M$, receives signals…
The most dramatic developments in theoretical physics in the next millennium are likely to come when we make progress on so far unresolved foundational questions. In this essay I consider two of the deepest problems confronting us, the…