Related papers: Straddling between determinism and randomness: Cha…
The paper starts with the proposal that the cause of the apparent insolubility of the free-will problem are several popular but strongly metaphysical notions and hypotheses. To reduce the metaphysics, some ideas are borrowed from physics. A…
Finetuning and Naturalness are extra-empirical theory assessments that reflect our expectation how scientific theories should provide an intuitive understanding about the foundations underlying the observed phenomena. Recently, the absence…
We analyze, from a theoretical viewpoint, the bidirectional interdisciplinary relation between mathematics and psychology, focused on the mathematical theory of deterministic dynamical systems, and in particular, on the theory of chaos. On…
The view of nature we adopt in the natural attitude is determined by common sense, without which we could not survive. Classical physics is modelled on this common-sense view of nature, and uses mathematics to formalise our natural…
Randomness is an unavoidable notion in discussing quantum physics, and this may trigger the curiosity to know more of its cultural history. This text is an invitation to explore the position on the matter of Thomas Aquinas, one of the most…
Bayesian methods since the time of Laplace have been understood by their practitioners as closely aligned to the scientific method. Indeed a recent champion of Bayesian methods, E. T. Jaynes, titled his textbook on the subject Probability…
We propose an interpretation of physics named potentiality realism. This view, which can be applied to classical as well as to quantum physics, regards potentialities (i.e. intrinsic, objective propensities for individual events to obtain)…
This article was written in response to a request from an editor of American Vedantist. It is shown that the idea that consciousness is essential to understanding quantum mechanics arises from logical fallacies. This may be welcome news to…
In a purely relational theory there exists a tension between the relational character of the theory and the existence of quantities like distance and duration. We review this issue in the context of the Leibniz-Clarke correspondence. We…
A source of unpredictability is equivalent to a source of information: unpredictability means not knowing which of a set of alternatives is the actual one; determining the actual alternative yields information. The degree of…
Despite provable unknowables in recursion theory, indeterminism and randomness in physics is confined to conventions, subjective beliefs and preliminary evidence. The history of the issue is very briefly reviewed, and answers to five…
Classical chaos is marked by an extreme sensitivity to initial conditions, where infinitesimally close trajectories separate exponentially over time. In quantum mechanics, however, unitary evolution and the uncertainty principle preclude…
Complexity is an interdisciplinary concept which, first of all, addresses the question of how order emerges out of randomness. For many reasons matrices provide a very practical and powerful tool in approaching and quantifying the related…
Interrelations between dynamical and statistical laws in physics, on the one hand, and between the classical and quantum mechanics, on the other hand, are discussed with emphasis on the new phenomenon of dynamical chaos. The principal…
Parrondo's paradox (PP) is a fundamental principle in nonlinear science where the alternation of individually losing strategies leads to a winning outcome. In this topical review, we provide the first systematic panorama of the synergy…
In the context of theories of the connection between mind and brain, physicalism is the demand that all is basically purely physical. But the concept of "physical" embodied in this demand is characterized essentially by the properties of…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
Free will is fundamental to morality, intuition of self, and normal functioning of the society. However, science does not provide a clear logical foundation for this idea. This paper considers the fundamental scientific argument against…
The rich experiences of an intentional, goal-oriented life emerge, in an unpredictable fashion, from the basic laws of physics. Here I argue that this unpredictability is no mirage: there are true gaps between life and non-life, mind and…
There are two broad opposing classes of attitudes to reality (realist vs idealist, material vs mental) with corresponding attitudes to knowledge (objective vs subjective, scientific vs romantic). I argue that these attitudes can be…