Related papers: Intransitivity and Vagueness
Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for…
The investigations on higher-order type theories and on the related notion of parametric polymorphism constitute the technical counterpart of the old foundational problem of the circularity (or impredicativity) of second and higher order…
The world appears to be well described by gauge theories; why? I suggest that gauge is more than mathematical redundancy. Gauge-dependent quantities can not be predicted, but there is a sense in which they can be measured. They describe…
One main goal of argumentation theory is to evaluate arguments and to determine whether they should be accepted or rejected. When there is no clear answer, a third option, being undecided, has to be taken into account. Indecision is often…
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…
In causal models, a given mechanism is assumed to be invariant to changes of other mechanisms. While this principle has been utilized for inference in settings where the causal variables are observed, theoretical insights when the variables…
Contradiction is often seen as a defect of intelligent systems and a dangerous limitation on efficiency. In this paper we raise the question of whether, on the contrary, it could be considered a key tool in increasing intelligence in…
Nonmonotonic logics are usually characterized by the presence of some notion of 'conditional' that fails monotonicity. Research on nonmonotonic logics is therefore largely concerned with the defeasibility of argument forms and the…
Automated decision systems are increasingly used for consequential decision making -- for a variety of reasons. These systems often rely on sophisticated yet opaque models, which do not (or hardly) allow for understanding how or why a given…
We demonstrate the simple and deep equivalence between quantum coherence and nonclassicality and the definite way in which they determine metrological resolution. Moreover, we define a coherence observable consistent with a classical…
Two statements by von Neumann and a thought-experiment by Peres prompts a discussion on the notions of one-shot distinguishability, orthogonality, semi-permeable diaphragm, and their thermodynamic implications. In the first part of the…
Paradoxes are a very frequent phenomenon in processes of thought which strive towards the intelectual and cognitive shifts. They occur in all areas of human spiritual activites. What we are interested here in, are the paradoxes in physics.…
Classical semantics assumes that one can model reference, predication and quantification with respect to a fixed domain of precise referent objects. Non-logical terms and quantification are then interpreted directly in terms of elements and…
Quantum theory is widely regarded as fundamentally indeterministic, yet classical frameworks can also exhibit indeterminism once infinite information is abandoned. At the same time, relativity is usually taken to forbid superluminal…
While speed is an ubiquitous concept in physics, its inverse - known as slowness - sometimes proves more relevant. We discuss some case studies within classical physics where such a notion is fruitful, before exploring how it can be…
Classical results for exchangeable systems of random variables are extended to multi-class systems satisfying a natural partial exchangeability assumption. It is proved that the conditional law of a finite multi-class system, given the…
We explain several separability criteria which rely on uncertainty relations. For the derivation of these criteria uncertainty relations in terms of variances or entropies can be used. We investigate the strength of the separability…
Transparency is a fundamental requirement for decision making systems when these should be deployed in the real world. It is usually achieved by providing explanations of the system's behavior. A prominent and intuitive type of explanations…
Unexpectedness is a central concept in Simplicity Theory, a theory of cognition relating various inferential processes to the computation of Kolmogorov complexities, rather than probabilities. Its predictive power has been confirmed by…
In an incoherent dictionary, most signals that admit a sparse representation admit a unique sparse representation. In other words, there is no way to express the signal without using strictly more atoms. This work demonstrates that sparse…