Related papers: Physical, Empirical, and Conditional Inductive Pos…
Theoretical physics is the search for simple and universal mathematical descriptions of the natural world. In contrast, much of modern biology is an exploration of the complexity and diversity of life. For many, this contrast is prima facie…
In recent decades there has been a resurge of interest in the foundations of quantum theory, partly motivated by new experimental techniques, partly by the emerging field of quantum information science. Old questions, asked since the…
It is argued that the nature of probability is essentially informational rather than physical and that quantum mechanical predictions should be viewed as logical inferences made on the basis of the information content of a given…
The quantum-mechanical description of the world, including human observers, makes substantial use of entanglement. In order to understand this, we need to adopt concepts of truth, probability and time which are unfamiliar in modern…
We discuss the key role that Hamiltonian notions play in physics. Five examples are given that illustrate the versatility and generality of Hamiltonian notions. The given examples concern the interconnection between quantum mechanics,…
Over the past 25 years, I have been involved in some intriguing developments in the foundations of physics, exploring the quantum reality problem, the relationship between quantum theory and gravity and the interplay between consciousness…
The centuries-long practice of the teaching turned mechanics into an academic construct detached from its underlying science, the physics of macroscopic bodies. In particular, the regularities that delineate the scope of validity of…
A discussion of the quantum mechanical use of superposition or entangled states shows that descriptions containing only statements about state vectors and experiments outputs are the most suitable for Quantum Mechanics. In particular, it is…
We elaborate on a new interpretation of quantum mechanics which we introduced recently. The main hypothesis of this new interpretation is that quantum particles are entities interacting with matter conceptually, which means that pieces of…
We discuss historical attempts to formulate a physical hypothesis from which Turing's thesis may be derived, and also discuss some related attempts to establish the computability of mathematical models in physics. We show that these…
There are two broad opposing classes of attitudes to reality (realist vs idealist, material vs mental) with corresponding attitudes to knowledge (objective vs subjective, scientific vs romantic). I argue that these attitudes can be…
This thesis investigates the connection between quantum theory, thermodynamics and information theory. Theories with structure similar to that of quantum theory are considered, mathematically described by the framework of "Generalized…
Physical superpositions exist both in classical and in quantum physics. However, what is exactly meant by 'superposition' in each case is extremely different. In this paper we discuss some of the multiple interpretations which exist in the…
In this paper we look at popular fairness methods that use causal counterfactuals. These methods capture the intuitive notion that a prediction is fair if it coincides with the prediction that would have been made if someone's race, gender…
Information plays an important role in our understanding of the physical world. We hence propose an entropic measure of information for any physical theory that admits systems, states and measurements. In the quantum and classical world,…
Counterfactuals -- expressing what might have been true under different circumstances -- have been widely applied in statistics and machine learning to help understand causal relationships. More recently, counterfactuals have begun to…
The paper attempts to convince that the orthodox interpretation of quantum mechanics does not contradict philosophical realism by throwing light onto certain properties of quantum systems that seem to have escaped attention as yet. The…
In previous work with Joost Vennekens I proposed a definition of actual causation that is based on certain plausible principles, thereby allowing the debate on causation to shift away from its heavy focus on examples towards a more…
This paper explores the options available to the anti-realist to defend a Quinean empirical under-determination thesis using examples of dualities. I first explicate a version of the empirical under-determination thesis that can be brought…
According to Newton's law of gravitation the force between two particles depends upon their inertial, as well as their active and passive gravitational masses. For ordinary matter all three of these are equal and positive. We consider here…