Related papers: The philosophy of causal set theory
The question of what ontological message (if any) is encoded in the formalism of contemporary physics is, to say the least, controversial. The reasons for this state of affairs are psychological and neurobiological. The processes by which…
We explicitly compute the causal structure of the Schwarzschild black hole spacetime, by providing an algorithm to decide if any pair of events is causally related. The primary motivation for this study comes from discrete quantum gravity,…
Non-perturbative theories of quantum gravity inevitably include configurations that fail to resemble physically reasonable spacetimes at large scales. Often, these configurations are entropically dominant and pose an obstacle to obtaining…
Philosophical analyses of causation take many forms but one major difficulty they all aim to address is that of the spatio-temporal continuity between causes and their effects. Bertrand Russell in 1913 brought the problem to its most…
The problems connected with a causality of space-time universe and with the paradox of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen are considered. A main philosophical problem and its possible solutions are briefly discussed. A concept of unified local…
We provide a unified operational framework for the study of causality, non-locality and contextuality, in a fully device-independent and theory-independent setting. We define causaltopes, our chosen portmanteau of "causal polytopes", for…
We briefly survey open questions in cosmology that either have been or could potentially be addressed with the help of the causal set theory approach to quantum gravity. Our discussion includes topics ranging from dark matter and dark…
It is often claimed that one cannot locate a notion of causation in fundamental physical theories. The reason most commonly given is that the dynamics of those theories do not support any distinction between the past and the future, and…
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…
Causal fermion systems are introduced as a general mathematical framework for formulating relativistic quantum theory. By specializing, we recover earlier notions like fermion systems in discrete space-time, the fermionic projector and…
The possibility of non-causal signal propagation is examined for various theories of dense matter. This investigation requires a discussion of definitions of causality, together with interpretations of spacetime position. Specific examples…
Rationals are known to form interesting and computationally rich structures, such as Farey sequences and infinite trees. Little attention is being paid to more general, systematic exposition of the basic properties of fractions as a set.…
Quantum theory is a probabilistic theory with fixed causal structure. General relativity is a deterministic theory but where the causal structure is dynamic. It is reasonable to expect that quantum gravity will be a probabilistic theory…
Contrary to our immediate and vivid sensation of past, present, and future as continually shifting non-relational modalities, time remains as tenseless and relational as space in all of the established theories of fundamental physics. Here…
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…
While the relation between visualization and scientific understanding has been a topic of long-standing discussion, recent developments in physics have pushed the boundaries of this debate to new and still unexplored realms. For it is…
Causality is a non-obvious concept that is often considered to be related to temporality. In this paper we present a number of past and present approaches to the definition of temporality and causality from philosophical, physical, and…
Over the past two decades, the rapid surge in data-intensive computational techniques for statistical modeling may have had the effect of diminishing the use of applied mathematics in causal scientific inquiry. In this paper, co-authored by…
The notion of microscopic state of the system at a given moment of time as a point in the phase space as well as a notion of trajectory is widely used in classical mechanics. However, it does not have an immediate physical meaning, since…
In the present study we attempt to incorporate the philosophical dialogue about physical reality into the instructional process of quantum mechanics. Taking into account that both scientific realism and constructivism represent, on the…