Related papers: Analysis of Free Will and Determinism in Physics
Capacity of conscious agents to perform genuine choices among future alternatives is a prerequisite for moral responsibility. Determinism that pervades classical physics, however, forbids free will, undermines the foundations of ethics, and…
A theory which claims to describe all the universe is advanced. It unifies general relativity, quantum field theory, and indeterministic conception. Basic entities are: classical metric tensor $g$, cosmic reference frame (including cosmic…
The study of undecidability in problems arising from physics has experienced a renewed interest, mainly in connection with quantum information problems. The goal of this review is to survey this recent development. After a historical…
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…
A definition of a {\it Realistic} Physics Theory is proposed based on the idea that, at all time, the set of physical properties possessed (at that time) by a system should unequivocally determine the probabilities of outcomes of all…
The analyzability of the universe into subsystems requires a concept of the "independence" of the subsystems, of which the relativistic quantum world supports many distinct notions which either coincide or are trivial in the classical…
We study deterministic and quantum dynamics from a constructive "finite" point of view, since the introduction of a continuum, or other actual infinities in physics poses serious conceptual and technical difficulties, without any need for…
Free will is sometimes summarised in the philosophical literature as the subjective impression felt by an individual that he or she is the ultimate source or cause of his or her own choices. The two most common arguments for denying the…
The problem of the rate and mechanisms of biological evolution was considered. It was shown that species could not be formed due to undirected mutations in characteristic times of about one million years. A mechanism of deterministic…
As it is well known, classical mechanics consists of several basic features like determinism, reductionism, completeness of knowledge and mechanicism. In this article the basic assumptions are discussed which underlie those features. It is…
Based on a number of experimentally verified physical observations, it is argued that the standard principles of quantum mechanics should be applied to the Universe as a whole. Thus, a paradigm is proposed in which the entire Universe is…
Quantum mechanics is a fundamentally probabilistic theory (at least so far as the empirical predictions are concerned). It follows that, if one wants to properly understand quantum mechanics, it is essential to clearly understand the…
If the quantum mechanical description of reality is not complete and a hidden variable theory is possible, what arises is the problem to explain where the rates of the outcomes of statistical experiments come from, as already noticed by…
I wish to discuss a large, interwoven set of topics pointed at in the title above. Much of what I say is highly speculative, some is testable, some is, at present, surely not. It is, I hope, useful, to set these ideas forth for our…
This chapter argues that the general philosophy of science should learn metaphilosophical lessons from the case of metaphysical underdetermination, as it occurs in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Section 2 presents the traditional…
Experiments violating Bell's inequality appear to indicate deterministic models do not correspond to a realistic theory of quantum mechanics. The theory of pilot waves seemingly overcomes this hurdle via nonlocality and statistical…
Einstein initially objected to the probabilistic aspect of quantum mechanics - the idea that God is playing at dice. Later he changed his ground, and focussed instead on the point that the Copenhagen Interpretation leads to what Einstein…
The universality of free fall is one of the most cherished principles in classical gravity. Its fate in the quantum world is one of the key questions in fundamental physics. We investigate the universality of free fall in the context of…
In this work, we present a logical formalism for reasoning about quantum systems in finite dimension. Contrary to the usual approach in quantum logic, our formalism is based classical first-order logic, which allows us to use the tools of…
It is argued that realism and true randomness are fully compatible. Realistic true random events are acts of pure creation that obey strict laws, but do not necessarily satisfy Kolmogorov's axioms of probabilities. Realistic true randomness…