Related papers: The philosophical problems of implementing superse…
Difficulties and discomfort with the interpretation of quantum mechanics are due to differences in language between it and classical physics. Analogies to The Special Theory of Relativity, which also required changes in the basic worldview…
It is difficult to extract reliable criteria for causal locality from the limited ingredients found in textbook quantum theory. In the end, Bell humbly warned that his eponymous theorem was based on criteria that "should be viewed with the…
Are there consistent and physically reasonable alternatives to the projection postulate? Does it have unique properties compared with acceptable alternatives? We answer these questions by systematically investigating hypothetical…
This work addresses a specific technical question of relevance to canonical quantization of gravity using the so-called new variables and loop-based techniques of Ashtekar, Rovelli, and Smolin. In particular, certain `superselection laws'…
I argue that the Oxford school Everett interpretation is internally incoherent, because we cannot claim that in an Everettian universe the kinds of reasoning we have used to arrive at our beliefs about quantum mechanics would lead us to…
Scientific theories need to be testable by observations, say using Bayes' theorem. A complete theory needs at least the three parts of dynamical laws for specified physical variables, the correct solution of the dynamical laws (boundary…
Nonlinear modifications to the laws of quantum mechanics have been proposed as a possible way to consistently describe information processing in the presence of closed timelike curves. These have recently generated controversy due to…
Physical laws are strikingly simple, yet there is no a priori reason for them to be so. I propose that nomic realists -- Humeans and non-Humeans -- should recognize simplicity as a fundamental epistemic guide for discovering and evaluating…
It is argued that the usual postulates of quantum mechanics are too strong. It is conjectured that it is possible to interpret all experiments if we maintain the formalism of quantum theory without modification, but weaken the postulates…
One of the most remarkable things about the human moral mind is its flexibility. We can make moral judgments about cases we have never seen before. We can decide that pre-established rules should be broken. We can invent novel rules on the…
The problem of measurement is often considered as an inconsistency inside the quantum formalism. Many attempts to solve (or to dissolve) it have been made since the inception of quantum mechanics. The form of these attempts depends on the…
Bayesian implementation concerns decision making problems when agents have incomplete information. This paper proposes that the traditional sufficient conditions for Bayesian implementation shall be amended by virtue of a quantum Bayesian…
We consider different choice procedures such as scoring rules, rules, using majority relation, value function and tournament matrix, which are used in social and multi-criteria choice problems. We focus on the study of the properties that…
Without a doubt many problems in physics arise as a consequence of our philosophical conception of the world. In this contribution however we endeavor to alleviate this scenario by putting forward a philosophical approach under which some…
More than a speculative technology, quantum computing seems to challenge our most basic intuitions about how the physical world should behave. In this thesis I show that, while some intuitions from classical computer science must be…
Construal of observable facts or events, that is, the manner in which we understand reality, is based not only on mathematical formulas of a theory suggested as a reasonable explanation for physical phenomena (like general relativity or…
Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the…
Recently, several authors have advocated the use of rule learning algorithms to model multi-label data, as rules are interpretable and can be comprehended, analyzed, or qualitatively evaluated by domain experts. Many rule learning…
Recently, there has been much interest in a new kind of ``unspeakable'' quantum information that stands to regular quantum information in the same way that a direction in space or a moment in time stands to a classical bit string: the…
Principles of cognitive economy would require that concepts about objects, properties and relations should be introduced only if they simplify the conceptualisation of a domain. Unexpectedly, classic logic conditionals, specifying…