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Related papers: Determinism Beyond Time Evolution

200 papers

This paper concerns the question of which collections of general relativistic spacetimes are deterministic relative to which definitions. We begin by considering a series of three definitions of increasing strength due to Belot (1995). The…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-10-30 JB Manchak , Thomas Barrett , Hans Halvorson , James Owen Weatherall

We distinguish two different concepts of time that play a role in physics: \textit{geometric time} and \textit{creative time}. The former is the time of deterministic physics and merely parametrizes a given evolution. The latter is instead…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2026-02-10 Flavio Del Santo , Nicolas Gisin

The aim of this article is to promote the use of probabilistic methods in the study of problems in mathematical general relativity. Two new and simple singularity theorems, whose features are different from the classical singularity…

Probability · Mathematics 2011-02-21 Ismael Bailleul

The issue of whether we make decisions freely has vexed philosophers for millennia, Resolving this is vital for solving a diverse range of problems, from the physiology of how the brain makes decisions (and how we assign moral…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2025-06-30 Tim Palmer

In this PhD thesis the ancient question of determinism ('Does every event have a cause ?') will be re-examined. In the philosophy of science and physics communities the orthodox position states that the physical world is indeterministic:…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2014-03-04 Louis Vervoort

In this paper, a modified formulation of generalized probabilistic theories that will always give rise to the structure of Hilbert space of quantum mechanics, in any finite outcome space, is presented and the guidelines to how to extend…

General Physics · Physics 2022-09-19 Raed M. Shaiia

Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2021-11-04 Nicolas Gisin

Causality has been often confused with the notion of determinism. It is mandatory to separate the two notions in view of the debate about quantum foundations. Quantum theory provides an example of causal not-deterministic theory. Here we…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-01-15 Giacomo M. D'Ariano , Franco Manessi , Paolo Perinotti

Planning is one of the most studied problems in computer science. In this paper, we consider the timeline-based approach, where the domain is modeled by a set of independent, but interacting, components, identified by a set of state…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2019-04-22 Laura Bozzelli , Alberto Molinari , Angelo Montanari , Adriano Peron

This paper argues that the traditional opposition between determinism and indeterminism in physics is representational rather than ontological. Deterministic-stochastic dualities are available in principle, and arise in a non-contrived way…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2026-01-13 David Nolland

We show that the local and deterministic mode of description is not only in conflict with the quantum theory, but also with relativity. We argue that elementary relativistic properties of spacetime lead to the emergence of a…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2020-06-24 Andrzej Dragan , Artur Ekert

A mechanism is proposed that allows to interpret the temporal evolution of a physical system as a result of the inability of an observer to record its whole state and a simple example is given. It is based on a review of the concepts of…

General Physics · Physics 2010-10-15 Alberto Bicego

By studying the set of correlations that are theoretically possible between physical systems without allowing for signalling of information backwards in time, we here identify correlations that can only be achieved if the time ordering…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2021-01-22 Tom Holden-Dye , Sandu Popescu

The paper considers the claim that quantum theories with a deterministic dynamics of objects in ordinary space-time, such as Bohmian mechanics, contradict the assumption that the measurement settings can be freely chosen in the EPR…

Quantum Physics · Physics 2015-06-24 Michael Esfeld

We provide five rearticulations of the thesis that the structure of spacetime is conventional, rather than empirically determined, based upon variation of the structures that are empirically underdetermined and modal contexts in which this…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2023-05-16 Ufuk I. Tasdan , Karim P. Y. Thébault

The paper defends the thesis that it's possible to maintain some conceptual preconditions of overcoming of relativistic intentions in modern philosophy of science ("there are no any general foundations in philosophy of science"). We found…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2015-02-09 Sergey Kulikov

A canonical formalism and constraint analysis for discrete systems subject to a variational action principle are devised. The formalism is equivalent to the covariant formulation, encompasses global and local discrete time evolution moves…

Mathematical Physics · Physics 2013-09-17 Bianca Dittrich , Philipp A Hoehn

Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs.…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2023-02-21 Flavio Del Santo , Nicolas Gisin

When modelling spacetime and classical physical fields, one typically assumes smoothness (infinite differentiability). But this assumption and its philosophical implications have not been sufficiently scrutinized. For example, we can appeal…

History and Philosophy of Physics · Physics 2026-02-20 Lu Chen , Tobias Fritz

Decision Focused Learning has emerged as a critical paradigm for integrating machine learning with downstream optimisation. Despite its promise, existing methodologies predominantly rely on probabilistic models and focus narrowly on task…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-03-21 Keivan Shariatmadar , Neil Yorke-Smith , Ahmad Osman , Fabio Cuzzolin , Hans Hallez , David Moens