Related papers: Free Will: A New Formulation
In quantum gravity there is no notion of absolute time. Like all other quantities in the theory, the notion of time has to be introduced "relationally", by studying the behavior of some physical quantities in terms of others chosen as a…
Humans dispose of two intertwined information processing pathways, cognitive information processing via neural firing patterns and diffusive volume control via neuromodulation. The cognitive information processing in the brain is…
The problem of explaining the relationship between subjective experience and physical reality remains difficult and unresolved. In most explanations, consciousness is epiphenomenal, without causal power. The most notable exception is…
Causality is omnipresent in scientists' verbalisations of their understanding, even though we have no formal consensual scientific definition for it. In Automata Networks, it suffices to say that automata "influence" one another to…
The human mind is capable of extraordinary achievements, yet it often appears to work against itself. It actively defends its cherished beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence, conveniently interprets information to conform to…
A key feature of human theory-of-mind is the ability to attribute beliefs to other agents as mentalistic explanations for their behavior. But given the wide variety of beliefs that agents may hold about the world and the rich language we…
Opinion formation and persuasion in argumentation are affected by three major factors: the argument itself, the source of the argument, and the properties of the audience. Understanding the role of each and the interplay between them is…
In many social-choice mechanisms the resulting choice is not the most preferred one for some of the participants, thus the need for methods to justify the choice made in a way that improves the acceptance and satisfaction of said…
The cognitive frame in which most neuropsychological research on the neural basis of behavior is conducted contains the assumption that brain mechanisms per se fully suffice to explain all psychologically described phenomena. This…
Bounded rationality, that is, decision-making and planning under resource limitations, is widely regarded as an important open problem in artificial intelligence, reinforcement learning, computational neuroscience and economics. This paper…
We examine how causal beliefs affect an agent's choices and how feedback on those choices leads to updated causal beliefs. Building on the structural-equations framework for modeling causality, we first examine the general problem of…
According to quantum theory, randomness is a fundamental property of the universe yet classical physics is mostly deterministic. In this article I show that it is possible for deterministic systems to arise from random ones and discuss the…
I propose here a new concept of information based on two relevant aspects of its expression. The first related to the undeniable fact that the expression of information modifies the physical state of its receiver. The second to the…
We make a formal sociologic study of the concept of free will. By using the language of mathematics and logic, we define what we call everlasting societies. Everlasting societies never age: persons never age, and the goods of the society…
Previous active inference accounts of emotion translate fluctuations in free energy to a sense of emotion, mainly focusing on valence. However, in affective science, emotions are often represented as multi-dimensional. In this paper, we…
Both deterministic and indeterministic physical laws are incompatible with control by genuine (non-illusory) free will. We propose that an indeterministic dynamics can be $weakly$ compatible with free will (FW), whereby the latter acts by…
We argue that the concepts of "freedom of choice" and of "causal order" are intrinsically linked: a choice is considered "free" if it is correlated only to variables in its causal future. We discuss the implications of this to Bell-type…
Probability theory, epistemically interpreted, provides an excellent, if not the best available account of inductive reasoning. This is so because there are general and definite rules for the change of subjective probabilities through…
An appropriate level of arousal induces positive emotions, and a high arousal potential may provoke negative emotions. To explain the effect of arousal on emotional valence, we propose a novel mathematical framework of arousal potential…
The self-simulational theory of temporal extension describes an information-theoretically formalized mechanism by which the width of subjective temporality emerges from the architecture of self-modelling. In this paper, the perspective of…