Related papers: The open past in an indeterministic physics
Constructor theory seeks to express all fundamental scientific theories in terms of a dichotomy between possible and impossible physical transformations - those that can be caused to happen and those that cannot. This is a departure from…
Is the universe digital or analog? In this essay I argue that both classical and quantum physics include limits that prevent us from definitively answering that question. That quantum physics does so is no surprise. That classical physics…
The uncertainty principle is a cornerstone of modern physics, and its implications have a fundamental impact on theoretical and applied quantum mechanics. The aim of this thesis is to study and apply the uncertainty relations between time…
There is a persistent confusion about determinism and predictability. In spite of the opinions of some eminent philosophers (e.g., Popper), it is possible to understand that the two concepts are completely unrelated. In few words we can say…
Quantum mechanics marks a radical departure from the classical understanding of Nature, fostering an inherent randomness which forbids a deterministic description; yet the most fundamental departure arises from something different. As shown…
We survey the field of nonparametric inference under shape constraints, providing a historical overview and a perspective on its current state. An outlook and some open problems offer thoughts on future directions.
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…
Superdeterminism is presently the only known consistent description of nature that is local, deterministic, and can give rise to the observed correlations of quantum mechanics. I here want to explain what makes this approach promising and…
The operational formulations of quantum theory are drastically time oriented. However, to the best of our knowledge, microscopic physics is time-symmetric. We address this tension by showing that the asymmetry of the operational…
This paper is a sequel to the series of papers [gr-qc/9409010, gr-qc/9505034, gr-qc/9603022, gr-qc/9609035, gr-qc/9609046, gr-qc/9704033, gr-qc/9704038, gr-qc/9708014, gr-qc/9802016]. The problem of the meaning of objective a priori…
We analyse the implications of the closure of the physical for experiments in the scientific study of consciousness when all the details are considered, especially how measurement results relate to physical events. It turns out that the…
Quantum mechanics has irked physicists ever since its conception more than 100 years ago. While some of the misgivings, such as it being unintuitive, are merely aesthetic, quantum mechanics has one serious shortcoming: it lacks a physical…
We consider the ambiguity associated with the choice of clock in time reparameterization invariant theories. This arbitrariness undermines the goal of prescribing a fixed set of physical laws, since a change of time variable can completely…
If the Past Hypothesis underlies the arrows of time, what is the status of the Past Hypothesis? In this paper, I examine the role of the Past Hypothesis in the Boltzmannian account and defend the view that the Past Hypothesis is a candidate…
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 electromagnetic interaction is characterised by discrete states for bound systems in contrast to continuous states for unbound systems. The difference merely arises because the characteristic equations do not exhibit the same behaviour…
I contrast two possible attitudes towards a given branch of physics: as inferential (i.e., as concerned with an agent's ability to make predictions given finite information), and as dynamical (i.e., as concerned with the dynamical equations…
Little effort has been devoted to studying generalised notions or models of (un)predictability, yet is an important concept throughout physics and plays a central role in quantum information theory, where key results rely on the supposed…
"Quantum mechanics must be regarded as open systems. On one hand, this is due to the fact that, like in classical physics, any realistic system is subjected to a coupling to an uncontrollable environment which influences it in a…
The problem of the determinism of Quantum Mechanics has been a main one during the 20th century. At the same time, in the context of Logic and Set Theory, the importance of ancient paradoxes as well as the appearance of many new ones, has…