Related papers: Ontological Categorizations and Selection Biases i…
We investigate structure that describes physical data in gravitational systems that is, to one degree or another, independent of the metric and affine structure. We dub such structure surplus structure and seek to incorporate it into our…
Unsupervised object discovery is commonly interpreted as the task of localizing and/or categorizing objects in visual data without the need for labeled examples. While current object recognition methods have proven highly effective for…
We survey a variety of cosmological problems where the issue of generality has arisen. This is aimed at providing a wider context for many claims and deductions made when philosophers of science choose cosmological problems for…
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
An ontology makes a special vocabulary which describes the domain of interest and the meaning of the term on that vocabulary. Based on the precision of the specification, the concept of the ontology contains several data and conceptual…
In this paper, following an elementary line of thought which somewhat differs from the usual one, we prove once more that any deterministic theory predictively equivalent to quantum mechanics unavoidably exhibits a contextual character. The…
Contextuality in quantum physics provides a key resource for quantum information and computation. The topological approach in [Abramsky and Brandenburger, New J. Phys., 2011, Abramsky et al., CSL 2015, 2015] characterizes contextuality as…
Cosmological parameter estimation from forthcoming experiments promise to reach much greater precision than current constraints. As statistical errors shrink, the required control over systematic errors increases. Therefore, models or…
String cosmology aims at providing a reliable description of the very early Universe in the regime where standard-model physics is no longer appropriate, and where we can safely apply the basic ingredients of superstring models such as…
In this thesis, I describe a number of recent important developments in neutrino cosmology on three fronts. Firstly, focusing on Large-Scale Structure (LSS) data, I will show that current cosmological probes contain a wealth of information…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes or universe domains -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our…
I discuss, through a few examples, how observational cosmology can provide insights on hypothetical fundamental physics phenomena or mechanisms, such as Grand Unified Theory, Superstring alternatives to the inflation paradigm, and inflation…
We define an inference system to capture explanations based on causal statements, using an ontology in the form of an IS-A hierarchy. We first introduce a simple logical language which makes it possible to express that a fact causes another…
Motivated by considerations in the foundations of quantum mechanics and inspired by the literature on vague predicates, we introduce the concept of an opaque predicate. While in the case of vague predicates there is a kind of indeterminacy…
Cosmological observations are beginning to reach a level of precision that allow us to test some of the most fundamental assumptions in our working model of the Universe. One such an assumption is that gravity is governed by the General…
Astronomers are often confronted with funky populations and distributions of objects: brighter objects are more likely to be detected; targets are selected based on colour cuts; imperfect classification yields impure samples. Failing to…
We note that in general there exist two basic aspects in any branch of physics, including cosmology - one dealing with the attributes of basic constituents and forces of nature, the other dealing with how structures arise from them and how…
We assume that the Universe has a non trivial topology whose compact spatial sections have a volume significantly smaller than the horizon volume. By a topological lens effect, such a "folded" space configuration generates multiple images…
While many observations support the validity of Einstein's general relativity as the theory of gravity, there are yet many that suggest the presence of new physics. In order to explain the high-redshift supernovae Ia observations together…
It is shown that for "ideal" macroscopic objects there are superselection rules forbidding superpositions of macroscopically distinguishable states of the objects. For real macroscopic bodies the notion of "weak" superselection rules is…