Related papers: On Causality and Predictivity
Quantum mechanics challenges our intuition on the cause-effect relations in nature. Some fundamental concepts, including Reichenbach's common cause principle or the notion of local realism, have to be reconsidered. Traditionally, this is…
When attempting to assess the strengths and weaknesses of various principles in their potential role of guiding the formulation of a theory of quantum gravity, it is crucial to distinguish between principles which are strongly supported by…
Although quantum mechanics is a very successful theory, its foundations are still a subject of intense debate. One of the main problems is the fact that quantum mechanics is based on abstract mathematical axioms, rather than on physical…
In general relativity, the causal structure between events is dynamical, but it is definite and observer-independent; events are point-like and the membership of an event A in the future or past light-cone of an event B is an…
The search for purely virtual quanta has attracted interest in the past. We consider various proposals and compare them to the concept of fake particle, or "fakeon". In particular, the Feynman-Wheeler propagator, which amounts to using the…
Causal influences are at the core of any empirical science, the reason why its quantification is of paramount relevance for the mathematical theory of causality and applications. Quantum correlations, however, challenge our notion of cause…
In the causal set approach to quantum gravity the spacetime continuum arises as an approximation to a fundamentally discrete substructure, the causal set, which is a locally finite partially ordered set. The causal set paradigm was…
Because of the non-locality of quantum entanglement, realist approaches to completing quantum mechanics have implications for our conception of space. Quantum gravity also is expected to predict phenomena in which the locality of classical…
In this review paper, we consider the fundamental nature of time and causality, most particularly, in the context of the theories of special and general relativity. We also discuss the issue of closed timelike curves in the context of…
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,…
We develop a new formalism for constructing probabilities associated to the causal ordering of events in quantum theory, where by an event we mean the emergence of a measurement record on a detector. We start with constructing probabilities…
The problem of causality is analyzed in the context of Local Quantum Field Theory. Contrary to recent claims, it is shown that apparent noncausal behaviour is due to a lack of the notion of sharp localizability for a relativistic quantum…
One of the main technical obstacles in constructing a consistent theory of quantum gravity is that the metric itself defines the causal structure required for quantization. This motivates implementing quantum aspects of gravity through an…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
Discussions on causal relations in real life often consider variables for which the definition of causality is unclear since the notion of interventions on the respective variables is obscure. Asking 'what qualifies an action for being an…
We study a collection of discrete Markov chains related to the causal set approach to modeling discrete theories of quantum gravity. The transition probabilities of these chains satisfy a general covariance principle, a causality principle,…
In this position paper we discuss three main shortcomings of existing approaches to counterfactual causality from the computer science perspective, and sketch lines of work to try and overcome these issues: (1) causality definitions should…
We begin with a brief summary of issues encountered involving causality in quantum theory, placing careful emphasis on the assumptions involved in results such as the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality. We critique some solutions to the…
We show how uncertainty in the causal structure of field theory is essentially inevitable when one includes quantum gravity. This includes the fact that lightcones are ill-defined in such a theory. This effect is small in the effective…
Causal set quantum gravity is a Lorentzian approach to quantum gravity, based on the causal structure of spacetime. It models each spacetime configuration as a discrete causal network of spacetime points. As such, key questions of the…