Related papers: Bayesian Probabilities and the Histories Algebra
I will propose that the reality to which the quantum formalism implicitly refers is a kind of generalized history, the word history having here the same meaning as in the phrase sum-over-histories. This proposal confers a certain…
From data in the present we can predict the future and retrodict the past. These predictions and retrodictions are for histories -- most simply time sequences of events. Quantum mechanics gives probabilities for individual histories in a…
A popular scientific contribution should not contradict any established facts and ought to be understandable. I complied with both these requirements and am offering a sufficiently full introduction to probability theory. Furthermore, I…
Traditional interpretations of quantum theory in terms of wave function collapse are particularly unappealing when considering the universe as a whole, where there is no clean separation between classical observer and quantum system and…
Decoherent histories quantum theory is reformulated with the assumption that there is one "real" fine-grained history, specified in a preferred complete set of sum-over-histories variables. This real history is described by embedding it in…
We discuss the role of propositions, truth, context and observers in scientific theories. We introduce the concept of generalized proposition and use it to define an algorithm for the classification of any scientific theory. The algorithm…
Bohmian mechanics can be generalized to a relativistic theory without preferred foliation, with a price of introducing a puzzling concept of spacetime probability conserved in a scalar time. We explain how analogous concept appears…
Modal interpretations of quantum mechanics assign definite properties to physical systems and specify single-time joint probabilities of these properties. We show that a natural extension, applying to properties at several times, can be…
This report introduces general ideas and some basic methods of the Bayesian probability theory applied to physics measurements. Our aim is to make the reader familiar, through examples rather than rigorous formalism, with concepts such as:…
I shall discuss some "conditions of possibility" of a quantum theory of gravity, stressing the need for solutions to some of fundamental problems confronting any attempt to apply some method of quantization to the field equations of general…
This paper offers a brief introduction to the framework of "general probabilistic theories", otherwise known as the "convex-operational" approach the foundations of quantum mechanics. Broadly speaking, the goal of research in this vein is…
We present and examine a result related to uncertainty reasoning, namely that a certain plausibility space of Cox's type can be uniquely embedded in a minimal ordered field. This, although a purely mathematical result, can be claimed to…
A rigorous general definition of quantum probability is given, which is valid for elementary events and for composite events, for operationally testable measurements as well as for inconclusive measurements, and also for non-commuting…
Probabilistic Spacetime is a simple generalization of the classical model of spacetime in General Relativity, such that it allows to consider multiple metric field realizations endowed with probabilities. The motivation for such a…
I consider the "Quantum Bayesian" view of quantum theory as expounded in a 2006 paper of Caves, Fuchs, and Schack. I argue that one can accept a generally personalist, decision-theoretic view of probability, including probability as…
The predictions of the Bohmian and the decoherent (or consistent) histories formulations of the quantum mechanics of a closed system are compared for histories -- sequences of alternatives at a series of times. For certain kinds of…
We survey a variety of cosmological problems where the issue of generality has arisen. This is aimed at providing a wider context for many claims and deductions made when philosophers of science choose cosmological problems for…
We discuss the use of histories labelled by a continuous time in the approach to consistent-histories quantum theory in which propositions about the history of the system are represented by projection operators on a Hilbert space. This…
One of the main concepts in quantum physics is a density matrix, which is a symmetric positive definite matrix of trace one. Finite probability distributions are a special case where the density matrix is restricted to be diagonal. Density…
Probability theory as extended logic is completed such that essentially any probability may be determined. This is done by considering propositional logic (as opposed to predicate logic) as syntactically suffcient and imposing a symmetry…