Related papers: Deterministic Theories
If there exists a classical, i.e. deterministic theory underlying quantum mechanics, an explanation must be found of the fact that the Hamiltonian, which is defined to be the operator that generates evolution in time, is bounded from below.…
Scientists often think of the world (or some part of it) as a dynamical system, a stochastic process, or a generalization of such a system. Prominent examples of systems are (i) the system of planets orbiting the sun or any other classical…
Are minds subject to laws of physics? Are the laws of physics computable? Are conscious thought processes computable? Currently there is little agreement as to what are the right answers to these questions. Penrose goes one step further and…
Eternalism is the view that the past, the present and the future exist simpliciter. A typical argument in favor of this view leans on the relativity of simultaneity. The 'equally real with' relation is assumed to be transitive between…
This paper presents and philosophically assesses three types of results on the observational equivalence of continuous-time measure-theoretic deterministic and indeterministic descriptions. The first results establish observational…
We develop a qualitative model of decision making with two aims: to describe how people make simple decisions and to enable computer programs to do the same. Current approaches based on Planning or Decisions Theory either ignore uncertainty…
To model is to represent. The threshold of decidability defines two epistemological choices: one model (or a finite number of models) suffices for representing the dynamics below the undecidable; above this threshold (defined as…
The general view is that all fundamental physical laws should be formulated within the framework given by quantum mechanics (QM). In a sense, QM therefore has the character of a metaphysical theory. Consequently, if it is possible to derive…
Darwinism conceives evolution as a consequence of random variation and natural selection, hence it is based on a materialistic, i.e. matter-based, view of science inspired by classical physics. But matter in itself is considered a very…
There are good motivations for considering some type of quantum histories formalism. Several possible formalisms are known, defined by different definitions of event and by different selection criteria for sets of histories. These…
Quantum Mechanics is generally considered to be the ultimate theory capable of explaining the emergence of randomness by virtue of the quantum measurement process. Therefore, Quantum Mechanics can be thought of as God's wonderfully…
According to the so-called ``Quantum Darwinist'' approach, the emergence of ``classical islands'' from a quantum background is assumed to obey a (selection) principle of maximal information. We illustrate this idea by considering the…
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…
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…
This article reviews and develops an epistemological tradition in the philosophy of science, known as convergentism, which holds that inference methods should be assessed based on their ability to converge to the truth across a range of…
We present a brief non-technical introduction to the standing discussion on the relation between Quantum Mechanics and Determinism. Quantum Mechanics inherent randomness in the measurement process is sometimes presented as a door to explain…
This paper illustrates the richness of the concept of regular sets of time bounds and demonstrates its application to problems of computational complexity. There is a universe of bounds whose regular subsets allow to represent several time…
Bayesian probability theory is used as a framework to develop a formalism for the scientific method based on principles of inductive reasoning. The formalism allows for precise definitions of the key concepts in theories of physics and also…
Heisenberg's uncertainty relation is commonly regarded as defining a level of unpredictability that is fundamentally incompatible with the deterministic laws embodied in classical field theories such as Einstein's general relativity. We…
Free will is an old philosophical enigma that has been recently revived by neuropsychology. We restrict ourselves to the problem that determinism seems to allow only an illusion of freedom but random decissions do not contain any freedom…