Related papers: From mindless mathematics to thinking meat?
In its most general form, a `secret objective' is any inconsistency between the experimental reality and the information provided to students prior to starting work on an experiment. Students are challenged to identify the secret objectives…
This paper is a response to some recent discussions of many-minds interpretations in the philosophical literature. After an introduction to the many-minds idea, the complexity of quantum states for macroscopic objects is stressed. Then it…
As quantum theory celebrates its 100th birthday, spectacular successes are mixed with outstanding puzzles and promises of new technologies. This article reviews both the successes of quantum theory and the ongoing debate about its…
Quantum physics has intrigued scientists and philosophers alike, because it challenges our notions of reality and locality--concepts that we have grown to rely on in our macroscopic world. It is an intriguing open question whether the…
Up to now, we have been faced with an age old fundamental dilemma posed by the mind-brain interaction problem, i.e. how is it that the mind which is subjective and immaterial, can interact with the brain which is objective and material?…
Issues related to a materialist philosophy are explored as concerns the implied equivalence of computers running software and human observers. One issue explored concerns the measurement process in quantum mechanics. Another issue explored…
This work builds upon a well-established research tradition on modal logics of awareness. One of its aims is to export tools and techniques to other areas within modal logic. To this end, we illustrate a number of significant bridges with…
As artificial intelligence (AI) improves, traditional alignment strategies may falter in the face of unpredictable self-improvement, hidden subgoals, and the sheer complexity of intelligent systems. Inspired by contemplative wisdom…
The study of defeasible reasoning unites epistemologists with those working in AI, in part, because both are interested in epistemic rationality. While it is traditionally thought to govern the formation and (with)holding of beliefs,…
It is well-known (at least in the education research literature) that primary school students face considerable difficulties in the understanding of negative integers (and numbers), related operations and their visualizations. In the…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
Much artificial intelligence research focuses on the problem of deducing the validity of unobservable propositions or hypotheses from observable evidence.! Many of the knowledge representation techniques designed for this problem encode the…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
The societal and ethical implications of the use of opaque artificial intelligence systems for consequential decisions, such as welfare allocation and criminal justice, have generated a lively debate among multiple stakeholder groups,…
The recently published "certainty-scope" conjecture offers a compelling insight into the inherent trade-off present within artificial intelligence (AI) systems. As general research, this investigation remains vital as a philosophical…
Quantum theory describes our universe incredibly successfully. To our classically-inclined brains, however, it is a bizarre description that requires a re-imagining of what fundamental reality, or "ontology", could look like. This thesis…
Theory of Mind is an essential ability of humans to infer the mental states of others. Here we provide a coherent summary of the potential, current progress, and problems of deep learning approaches to Theory of Mind. We highlight that many…
This essay discusses the idea that a Theory of Everything would not be complete without a theory of consciousness as one of its parts, and the suggestion that new physics may be needed to describe consciousness. I argue that the motivations…
We discuss whether science is in the process of being transformed from a quest for causality to a quest for correlation in light of the recent development in artificial intelligence. We observe that while a blind trust in the most seductive…
The ``Hard Problem" of consciousness refers to a long-standing enigma about how qualia emerge from physical processes in the brain. Building on insights from the development of non-Euclidean geometry, this paper seeks to present a…