Related papers: Embracing undecidability: Cognitive needs and theo…
Existing physical theories do not predict every feature of our experience but only certain regularities of that experience. That difference between what could be observed and what can be predicted is one kind of limit on scientific…
Church's hypothesis and Godel's theorem may provide constraints on mental processes.As a relief quantum entanglement may lead to a definite proposal as regards the nature of reality and how much of it we are able to know and how do we know…
We believe, in the sense of supporting ideas and considering them correct while dismissing doubts about them. We take sides about ideas and theories as if that was the right thing to do. And yet, from a rational point of view, this type of…
Although various limits on the predicability of physical phenomena as well as on physical knowables are commonly established and accepted, we challenge their ultimate validity. More precisely, we claim that fundamental limits arise only…
People learn whenever and wherever possible, and whatever they like or encounter--Mathematics, Drama, Art, Languages, Physics, Philosophy, and so on. With the bursting of knowledge, evaluation of one's understanding of conceptual knowledge…
Evaluating theories in physics used to be easy. Our theories provided very distinct predictions. Experimental accuracy was so small that worrying about epistemological problems was not necessary. That is no longer the case. The…
There exist dozens of interpretations of quantum theory, but they do not seem to contribute much to understanding the theory. This paper attempts to clarify some issues that are discussed in those interpretations. The main keywords are:…
The ability to reason under uncertainty and with incomplete information is a fundamental requirement of decision support technology. In this paper we argue that the concentration on theoretical techniques for the evaluation and selection of…
Any problem is concerned with the mind, but what do minds make a decision on? Here we show that there are three conditions for the mind to make a certain answer. We found that some difficulties in physics and mathematics are in fact…
What would be the consequences if there were fundamental limits to our ability to experimentally explore the world? In this work we seriously consider this question. We assume the existence of statements whose truth value is not…
Possibility theory offers a framework where both Lehmann's "preferential inference" and the more productive (but less cautious) "rational closure inference" can be represented. However, there are situations where the second inference does…
The 20th century has revealed two important limitations of scientific knowledge. On the one hand, the combination of Poincar\'e's nonlinear dynamics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle leads to a world picture where physical reality is,…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
General relativity treats spacetime as dynamical and exhibits its breakdown at singularities. This failure is interpreted as evidence that quantum gravity is not a theory formulated within spacetime; instead, it must explain the very…
Incompleteness theorems of Godel, Turing, Chaitin, and Algorithmic Information Theory have profound epistemological implications. Incompleteness limits our ability to ever understand every observable phenomenon in the universe.…
People learn whenever and wherever possible, and whatever they like or encounter--Mathematics, Drama, Art, Languages, Physics, Philosophy, and so on. With the bursting of knowledge, evaluation of one's possession of knowledge becomes…
This paper motivates the study of decision theory as necessary for aligning smarter-than-human artificial systems with human interests. We discuss the shortcomings of two standard formulations of decision theory, and demonstrate that they…
Machines are being increasingly used in decision-making processes, resulting in the realization that decisions need explanations. Unfortunately, an increasing number of these deployed models are of a 'black-box' nature where the reasoning…
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…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…