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We recently performed cognitive experiments on conjunctions and negations of two concepts with the aim of investigating the combination problem of concepts. Our experiments confirmed the deviations (conceptual vagueness, underextension,…
Active inference is a state-of-the-art framework in neuroscience that offers a unified theory of brain function. It is also proposed as a framework for planning in AI. Unfortunately, the complex mathematics required to create new models --…
Phenomenology is the rigorous descriptive study of conscious experience. Recent attempts to formalize Husserlian phenomenology provide us with a mathematical model of perception as a function of prior knowledge and expectation. In this…
Although quintessence cosmologies seem to explain the amount of cosmological constant today, the required conditions are severe. For example, an extremely slowly varying and light scalar field that rolls toward the vanishing vacuum energy…
The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest exploring the possibility that quantum physics could be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective…
Understanding how biological organisms make decisions is of fundamental importance in understanding behavior. Such an understanding within evolutionary game theory so far has been sought by appealing to bounded rationality. Here, we present…
Real-world problems, for example in climate applications, often require causal reasoning on spatially gridded time series data or data with comparable structure. While the underlying system is often believed to behave similarly at different…
Recent advances in artificial intelligence reveal the limits of purely predictive systems and call for a shift toward causal and collaborative reasoning. Drawing inspiration from the revolution of Grothendieck in mathematics, we introduce…
The science of consciousness has been successful over the last decades. Yet, it seems that some of the key questions remain unanswered. Perhaps, as a science of consciousness, we cannot move forward using the same theoretical commitments…
The evolution of the Universe is traditionally examined by monitoring how its material content evolves as it expands. This model of an isolated system is expressed as the equation of motion of the bulk but segmented into different epochs.…
Recently, it has been showed that a slow expansion, which is asymptotically a static state in infinite past and may be described as an evolution with \epsilon \ll -1, of early universe may lead to the generation of primordial perturbation…
The influence of recent detections of a finite vacuum energy ("cosmological constant") on our formulation of anthropic conjectures, particularly the so-called Final Anthropic Principle is investigated. It is shown that non-zero vacuum…
The random first-order transition (RFOT) theory of the structural glass transition is reviewed in a pedagogical fashion. The rigidity that emerges in crystals and glassy liquids is of the same fundamental origin. In both cases, it…
In the present article we have investigated a very natural question regarding the dynamics of the universe, namely, the possibility of its decelerating phase immediately after the present accelerating phase. To begin with, we have focused…
Learning transferable knowledge across similar but different settings is a fundamental component of generalized intelligence. In this paper, we approach the transfer learning challenge from a causal theory perspective. Our agent is endowed…
Novelties are part of our daily lives. We constantly adopt new technologies, conceive new ideas, meet new people, experiment with new situations. Occasionally, we as individuals, in a complicated cognitive and sometimes fortuitous process,…
I develop Rafael D. Sorkin's proposal that a partially ordered process of the birth of spacetime atoms in causal set quantum gravity provides an objective physical correlate of our perception of time passing. I argue that one cannot have a…
This article is an invitation. It is, first, an invitation to consider as a subject worthy of attention the wide range of situations where small discrete elements, either bubbles, droplets or solid particles, are embedded in turbulent…
Causality in a shockwave state is related to the analytic properties of a four-point correlation function. Extending recent results for scalar probes, we show that this constrains the couplings of the stress tensor to light spinning…
We explore whether the growth dynamics paradigm of Causal Set Theory is compatible with past-infinite causal sets. We modify the Classical Sequential Growth dynamics of Rideout and Sorkin to accommodate growth "into the past" and discuss…