Related papers: Determinism Beyond Time Evolution
Determinism is (roughly) the thesis that the past determines the future. But efforts to define it precisely have exposed deep methodological disagreements. Standard possible-worlds formulations of determinism presuppose an "agreement"…
We investigate the fate of determinism in general relativity (GR), comparing the philosopher's account with the physicist's well-posed initial value formulations. The fate of determinism is interwoven with the question of what it is for a…
The laws of nature have come a long way since the time of Newton: quantum mechanics and relativity have given us good reasons to take seriously the possibility of laws which may be non-local, atemporal, `all-at-once,' retrocausal, or in…
We give a counter example to show that determinism as such is in contradiction to quantum mechanics. More precisely, we consider a simple quantum system and its environment, including the measurement device, and make the assumption that the…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
Free will discourse is primarily centred around the thesis of determinism. Much of the literature takes determinism as its starting premise, assuming it true for the sake of discussion, and then proceeds to present arguments for why, if…
It is often claimed that the fundamental laws of physics are deterministic and time-symmetric and that therefore our experience of the passage of time is an illusion. This paper will critically discuss these claims and show that they are…
It is considered the study of determinism in the theories of physics. Based on fundamental postulates of physics, it is proved that the evolution of the universe is univocally determined, proving ultimately that free will does not exist. In…
We propose a definition of determinism for a physical system that includes, besides the measurement device, the surrounding environment. This enlarged system is assumed to follow a predefined trajectory starting from some (unknown) initial…
We propose terminology to classify interpretations of quantum mechanics and models that modify or complete quantum mechanics. Our focus is on models which have previously been referred to as superdeterministic (strong or weak), retrocausal…
A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), ''it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the…
Darwinism conceives evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very…
Time can be defined as the duration between events. It is irreversible. When used as a variable in quantifying the changing properties of matter, this irreversibility of time is incompatible with Newton's deterministic mechanics and with…
Baroque questions of set-theoretic foundations are widely assumed to be irrelevant to physics. In this article, I demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect. I show that the fundamental physical question of whether a theory is…
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…
The traditional metaphysical debate between static and dynamic views in the philosophy of time is examined in light of considerations concerning the nature of time in physical theory. Adapting the formalism of Rovelli (1995, 2004), I set…
A deformation of special relativistic kinematics (possible signal of a theory of quantum gravity at low energies) leads to a modification of the notion of spacetime. At the classical level, this modification is required when one considers a…
This paper argues for the following three theses: (1) There is a clear reason to prefer physical theories with deterministic dynamical equations: such theories are maximally rich in information and usually also maximally simple. (2) There…
Over the last two decades, there has been an extensive study on logical formalisms for specifying and verifying real-time systems. Temporal logics have been an important research subject within this direction. Although numerous logics have…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…