Related papers: The philosophy of causal set theory

A sketch of three senses of emergence and a suggestive view on the emergence of time and the direction of time is presented. After trying to identify which issues philosophers interested in emergent phenomena in physics view as important I…

To clarify some aspects of the application of Special Relativity, spacetime is sliced into null geodesic hypersurfaces as an alternative to the hypersurfaces of simultaneity normally adopted. Events at particle locations on the hypersurface…

Quantum causality extends the conventional notion of fixed causal structure by allowing channels and operations to act in an indefinite causal order. The importance of such an indefinite causal order ranges from the foundational---e.g.…

In this review paper, we consider the fundamental nature of time and causality, most particularly, in the context of the theories of special and general relativity. We also discuss the issue of closed timelike curves in the context of…

Machine learning models increasingly function as representational systems, yet the philosoph- ical assumptions underlying their internal structures remain largely unexamined. This paper develops a structuralist decision framework for…

The construction of first-order logic and set theory gives rise to apparent circularities of mutual dependence, making it unclear which can act as a self-contained starting point in the foundation of mathematics. In this paper, we carry out…

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…

Causality is a fundamental part of the scientific endeavour to understand the world. Unfortunately, causality is still taboo in much of psychology and social science. Motivated by a growing number of recommendations for the importance of…

In this article we set out to understand the significance of the process matrix formalism and the quantum causal modelling programme for ongoing disputes about the role of causation in fundamental physics. We argue that the process matrix…

Much of our experiments are designed to uncover the cause(s) and effect(s) behind a data generating mechanism (i.e., phenomenon) we happen to be interested in. Uncovering such relationships allows us to identify the true working of a…

Using ideas from synthetic topology, a new approach to descriptive set theory is suggested. Synthetic descriptive set theory promises elegant explanations for various phenomena in both classic and effective descriptive set theory.…

Recent years have seen many advances in methods for causal structure learning from data. The empirical assessment of such methods, however, is much less developed. Motivated by this gap, we pose the following question: how can one assess,…

The logical line is traced of formulation of theory of mechanics founded on the basic correlations of mathematics of hypercomplex numbers and associated geometric images. Namely, it is shown that the physical equations of quantum, classical…

What ontology does realism about the quantum state suggest? The main extant view in contemporary philosophy of physics is wave-function realism. We elaborate the sense in which wave-function realism does provide an ontological picture; and…

A non-local hidden variables theory for non-relativisitic quantum theory is presented, which gives a realist completion of quantum mechanics, in the sense of a complete description of individual events. The proposed fundamental theory is an…

I give a review of the conceptual issues that arise in theories of quantum cosmology. I start by emphasising some features of ordinary quantum theory that also play a crucial role in understanding quantum cosmology. I then give motivations…

Some authors in the quantum gravity community endorse, explicitly or implicitly, a radical relationalist view of time which states that the ordinal structure of time is not needed even in our classical theories, especially in general…

Causal models and methods have great promise, but their progress has been stalled. Proposals using causality get squeezed between two opposing worldviews. Scientific perfectionism--an insistence on only using "correct" models--slows the…

In general relativity, the causal structure between events is dynamical, but it is definite and observer-independent; events are point-like and the membership of an event A in the future or past light-cone of an event B is an…

Although general relativity is a predictively successful theory, it treats matter as classical rather than as quantum. For this reason, it will have to be replaced by a more fundamental quantum theory of gravity. Attempts to formulate a…