Related papers: Deterministic Theories
We propose a formal treatment of scenarios in the context of a dialectical argumentation formalism for qualitative reasoning about uncertain propositions. Our formalism extends prior work in which arguments for and against uncertain…
We propose and study a system whose dynamics are governed by predictions of its future states. General formalism and concrete examples are presented. We find that the dynamical characteristics depend on both how to shape predictions as well…
In this paper, we argue that there are foundational dilemmas in theoretical physics related to the concept of reality and the nature of mathematics in physics. Physical theory is treated as a conceptual organism which develops under the…
Possibilistic logic has been proposed as a numerical formalism for reasoning with uncertainty. There has been interest in developing qualitative accounts of possibility, as well as an explanation of the relationship between possibility and…
Counterfactual definiteness must be used as at least one of the postulates or axioms that are necessary to derive Bell-type inequalities. It is considered by many to be a postulate that is not only commensurate with classical physics (as…
This paper responds to claims that causal closure of the underlying microphysics determines brain outcomes as a matter of principle, even if we cannot hope to ever carry out the needed calculations in practice. Following two papers of mine…
The new orthodoxy of quantum mechanics (QM) based on the decoherence approach requires many-worlds as an essential ingredient for logical consistency, and one may wonder what status to give to all these "other worlds". Here we advocate that…
Inspired by a quantum mechanical formalism to model concepts and their disjunctions and conjunctions, we put forward in this paper a specific hypothesis. Namely that within human thought two superposed layers can be distinguished: (i) a…
People care about decision outcomes and how decisions get made, both when making decisions and reflecting on decisions. But formalizing the full range of normative concerns that drive decisions is an open challenge. We introduce Axiomatic…
The paper considers the claim that quantum theories with a deterministic dynamics of objects in ordinary space-time, such as Bohmian mechanics, contradict the assumption that the measurement settings can be freely chosen in the EPR…
For more than fifty years, taxonomists have proposed numerous alternative definitions of species while they searched for a unique, comprehensive, and persuasive definition. This monograph shows that these efforts have been unnecessary, and…
This position paper reflects on the state-of-the-art in decision-making under uncertainty. A classical assumption is that probabilities can sufficiently capture all uncertainty in a system. In this paper, the focus is on the uncertainty…
Some mathematical theories in physics justify their explanatory superiority over earlier formalisms by the clarity of their postulates. In particular, axiomatic reconstructions drive home the importance of the composition rule and the…
Franson showed that Aspect's experiment to test Bell's inequality did not rule out local realistic theories with delayed determinism. A class of local, deterministic discrete mathematical models with delayed determinism is described that…
Underlying any theory of physics is a layer of conceptual frames. They connect the mathematical structures used in theoretical models with physical phenomena, but they also constitute our fundamental assumptions about reality. Many of the…
We study a subclass of POMDPs, called Deterministic POMDPs, that is characterized by deterministic actions and observations. These models do not provide the same generality of POMDPs yet they capture a number of interesting and challenging…
A formal theory of experimentation will be presented. Such a theory presents the necessary & sufficient conditions a world must satisfy in order to admit the use of the scientific method.
Several variations on the definition of a Formal Topology exist in the literature. They differ on how they express convergence, the formal property corresponding to the fact that open subsets are closed under finite intersections. We…
The prescriptions of our two most prominent strands of decision theory, evidential and causal, differ in a general class of problems known as Newcomb problems. In these, evidential decision theory prescribes choosing a dominated act.…
We propose a new determinacy hypothesis for transfinite games, use the hypothesis to extend the perfect set theorem, prove relationships between various determinacy hypotheses, expose inconsistent versions of determinacy, and provide a…