Related papers: Towards a theory of negative dependence
Understanding the causal influences that hold among parts of a system is critical both to explaining that system's natural behaviour and to controlling it through targeted interventions. In a quantum world, understanding causal relations is…
Physical theories must stem from observation. The possibility that perceived events are simulated, not real, raises a crucial dilemma about the credibility of known physics, known as the simulation hypothesis. To analyze this hypothesis in…
The paper starts with the proposal that the cause of the apparent insolubility of the free-will problem are several popular but strongly metaphysical notions and hypotheses. To reduce the metaphysics, some ideas are borrowed from physics. A…
This article may be seen as a summary and a final discussion of the work that the author has done in recent years on the foundation of quantum theory. It is shown that quantum mechanics as a model follows under certain specific conditions…
Intercausal reasoning is a common inference pattern involving probabilistic dependence of causes of an observed common effect. The sign of this dependence is captured by a qualitative property called product synergy. The current definition…
We consider (finitary, propositional) logics through the original use of Category Theory: the study of the "sociology of mathematical objects", aligning us with a recent, and growing, trend of study logics through its relations with other…
The stochastic theory of relativistic quantum mechanics presented here is modelled on the one that has been proposed previously and that was claimed to be a promising substitute to the orthodox theory in the non-relativistic domain. So it…
Inspired by the theory of desirable gambles that is used to model uncertainty in the field of imprecise probabilities, I present a theory of desirable things. Its aim is to model a subject's beliefs about which things are desirable. What…
Haag's theorem cries out for explanation and critical assessment: it sounds the alarm that something is (perhaps) not right in one of the standard way of constructing interacting fields to be used in generating predictions for scattering…
In this paper we provide a theoretical analysis of counterfactual invariance. We present a variety of existing definitions, study how they relate to each other and what their graphical implications are. We then turn to the current major…
Passivity is an imperative concept and a widely utilized tool in the analysis and control of interconnected systems. It naturally arises in the modelling of physical systems involving passive elements and dynamics. While many theorems on…
The causal structure of space-time offers a natural notion of an opposite or orthogonal in the logical sense, where the opposite of a set is formed by all points non time-like related with it. We show that for a general space-time the…
This work assembles some basic theoretical elements on thermal equilibrium, stability conditions, and fluctuation theory in self-gravitating systems illustrated with a few examples. Thermodynamics deals with states that have settled down…
We generalize the notion of consequence relation standard in abstract treatments of logic to accommodate intuitions of relevance. The guiding idea follows the \emph{use criterion}, according to which in order for some premises to have some…
The postulate of independence of cause and mechanism (ICM) has recently led to several new causal discovery algorithms. The interpretation of independence and the way it is utilized, however, varies across these methods. Our aim in this…
Fluctuation theorems, which have been developed over the past 15 years, have resulted in fundamental breakthroughs in our understanding of how irreversibility emerges from reversible dynamics, and have provided new statistical mechanical…
In the absence of an external frame of reference physical degrees of freedom must describe relations between systems. Using a simple model, we investigate how such a relational quantum theory naturally arises by promoting reference systems…
Promoting a theory with a finite number of terms into an effective field theory with an infinite number of terms worsens simplicity, predictability, falsifiability, and other attributes often favored in theory choice. However, the…
Bayesian probability theory is used as a framework to develop a formalism for the scientific method based on principles of inductive reasoning. The formalism allows for precise definitions of the key concepts in theories of physics and also…
I examine the arguments which have been given for quantum fluctuation-dissipation theorems. I distinguish between a weak form of the theorem, which is true under rather general conditions, and a strong form which requires a Langevin…