Related papers: Causal Stance
Tasks that involve complex interactions between objects with unknown dynamics make planning before execution difficult. These tasks require agents to iteratively improve their actions after actively exploring causes and effects in the…
Classical physics is generally regarded as deterministic, as opposed to quantum mechanics that is considered the first theory to have introduced genuine indeterminism into physics. We challenge this view by arguing that the alleged…
Sound educational policy recommendations require valid estimates of causal effects, but observational studies in physics education research sometimes have loosely specified causal hypotheses. The connections between the observational data…
Avoiding harm is an uncontroversial aim of personalized medicine and other epidemiologic initiatives. However, the precise mathematical translation of "harm" is disputable. Here we use a formal causal language to study common, but distinct,…
This paper explains why internal and external validity cannot be simultaneously maximised. It introduces "evidential states" to represent the information available for causal inference and shows that routine study operations (restriction,…
A strongly deterministic theory of physics is one that permits exactly one possible history of the universe. In the words of Penrose (1989), ''it is not just a matter of the future being determined by the past; the entire history of the…
We propose a definition of determinism for a physical system that includes, besides the measurement device, the surrounding environment. This enlarged system is assumed to follow a predefined trajectory starting from some (unknown) initial…
This article presents the most interesting philosophical issues as they arise in causal set theory. The first concerns the apparent disappearance of spacetime at the fundamental level. It shows how the looming empirical incoherence is…
The material conditional has long been charged with paradox. Defined truth-functionally, it renders true any conditional whose antecedent is false or consequent true -- hence, seemingly absurd statements such as `If unicorns exist, then…
Most physics theories are deterministic, with the notable exception of quantum mechanics which, however, comes plagued by the so-called measurement problem. This state of affairs might well be due to the inability of standard mathematics to…
Causal modelling provides a powerful set of tools for identifying causal structure from observed correlations. It is well known that such techniques fail for quantum systems, unless one introduces `spooky' hidden mechanisms. Whether one can…
Consciousness and quantum mechanics are among the most puzzling phenomena studied in the sciences. Some scholars suggest they are related, though others think this claim commits a "minimization of mystery" fallacy. The aim of this…
It is often claimed that one cannot locate a notion of causation in fundamental physical theories. The reason most commonly given is that the dynamics of those theories do not support any distinction between the past and the future, and…
Quantum theory expresses the observable relations between physical properties in terms of probabilities that depend on the specific context described by the "state" of a system. However, the laws of physics that emerge at the macroscopic…
Recent authors have proposed analyzing conditional reasoning through a notion of intervention on a simulation program, and have found a sound and complete axiomatization of the logic of conditionals in this setting. Here we extend this…
In this work, we give rigorous operational meaning to superposition of causal orders. This fits within a recent effort to understand how the standard operational perspective on quantum theory could be extended to include indefinite…
We present several philosophical ideas emerging from the studies of complex systems. We make a brief introduction to the basic concepts of complex systems, for then defining "abstraction levels". These are useful for representing…
Causal spaces have recently been introduced as a measure-theoretic framework to encode the notion of causality. While it has some advantages over established frameworks, such as structural causal models, the theory is so far only developed…
The precise definition of causality is currently an open problem in philosophy and statistics. We believe causality should be defined as functions (in mathematics) that map causes to effects. We propose a reductive definition of causality…
Along with weaving together observations, experiments, and theoretical constructs into a coherent mesh of understanding of the world around us, physics over its past five centuries has continuously refined the base concepts on which the…