Related papers: Reality, No Matter How You Slice It
The idea of a moving present or `now' seems to form part of our most basic beliefs about reality. Such a present, however, is not reflected in any of our theories of the physical world. I show in this article that presentism, the doctrine…
We critically analyse the point of view for which laws of nature are just a mean to compress data. Discussing some basic notions of dynamical systems and information theory, we show that the idea that the analysis of large amount of data by…
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…
Classical physics and quantum physics suggest two meta-physical types of reality: the classical notion of a objectively definite reality with properties "all the way down," and the quantum notion of an objectively indefinite type of…
Is quantum mechanics about 'states'? Or is it basically another kind of probability theory? It is argued that the elementary formalism of quantum mechanics operates as a well-justified alternative to 'classical' instantiations of a…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might be split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
A physical theory is proposed that obeys both the principles of special relativity and of quantum mechanics. As a key feature, the laws are formulated in terms of quantum events rather than of particle states. Temporal and spatial…
Every physical measuring needs a finite, different from zero measurement time and provides information in form of the choice of a measurement result from all possible measurement results. If infinitely many (different) measurement results…
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…
The physical world is quantum. However, our description of the quantum physics still relies much on concepts in classical physics and in some cases with `quantized' interpretations. The most important case example is that of spacetime. We…
In this paper we consider theories in which reality is described by some underlying variables. Each value these variables can take represents an ontic state (a particular state of reality). The preparation of a quantum state corresponds to…
How should we interpret physical theories, and especially quantum theory, if we drop the assumption that we should treat it as an exact description of the whole Universe? I expound and develop the claim that physics is about the study of…
Beginning with the Everett-DeWitt many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, there have been a series of proposals for how the state vector of a quantum system might split at any instant into orthogonal branches, each of which…
Measurement outcomes provide data for a physical theory. Unless they are objective they support no objective scientific knowledge. So the outcome of a quantum measurement must be an objective physical fact. But recent arguments purport to…
The image of physics is connected with simple "mechanical" deterministic events: that an apple always falls down, that force equals mass times acceleleration. Indeed, applications of such concept to social or historical problems go back two…
Taking into account the results that we have been obtained during the last decade in the foundations of quantum mechanic we put forward a view on reality that we call the 'creation discovery view'. In this view it is made explicit that a…
Some recent experiments claim to show that any model in which a quantum state represents mere information about an underlying physical reality of the system must make predictions which contradict those of quantum theory. The present work…
We offer a fresh perspective on the relational interpretation of quantum mechanics as a way of thinking about the world described by quantum theory based on quantifiable notions of information. This allows us to provide a definition of a…
It is often said that in general relativity time does not exist. This is because the Einstein equations generate motion in time that is a symmetry of the theory, not true time evolution. In quantum gravity, the timelessness of general…
If a cat, a cannonball, and an economics textbook are all dropped from the same height, they fall to the ground with exactly the same acceleration under the influence of gravity. This equality of gravitational accelerations of different…