Related papers: Defining Civilization utilizing Anthropic Reasonin…
The original formulation of the (weak) anthropic principle was prompted by a question about objective time at a macroscopic level, namely the age of the universe when ``anthropic'' observers such as ourselves would be most likely to emerge.…
The infrastructure upon which the functioning of society depends is composed of complex ecosystems of systems. Consequently, we must reason about the properties of such ecosystems, which requires that we construct models of them. There are…
Abductive reasoning aims to find plausible explanations for an event. This style of reasoning is critical for commonsense tasks where there are often multiple plausible explanations. Existing approaches for abductive reasoning in natural…
The aim of this thesis is to question some of the basic assumptions that go into building the $\Lambda$CDM model of our universe. The assumptions we focus on are the initial conditions of the universe, the fundamental forces in the universe…
We define a universe as the contents of a spacetime box with comoving walls, large enough to contain essentially all phenomena that can be conceivably measured. The initial time is taken as the epoch when the lowest CMB modes undergo…
We consider emergence from the perspective of dynamics: states of a system evolving with time. We focus on the role of a decomposition of wholes into parts, and attempt to characterize relationships between levels without reference to…
Convincing someone of the truth value of a premise requires understanding and articulating the core logical structure of the argument which proves or disproves the premise. Understanding the logical structure of an argument refers to…
One purpose -- quite a few thinkers would say the main purpose -- of seeking knowledge about the world is to enhance our ability to make good decisions. An item of knowledge that can make no conceivable difference with regard to anything we…
There are investigated the generalized methods of cognition of the Existing, i.e. everything that is able to influence to the cognizer, and everything differed from the Existing is postulated as indistinguishable from the non-existing and…
Abductive reasoning, reasoning for inferring explanations for observations, is often mentioned in scientific, design-related and artistic contexts, but its understanding varies across these domains. This paper reviews how abductive…
Social evolutionary theory seeks to explain increases in the scale and complexity of human societies, from origins to present. Over the course of the twentieth century, social evolutionary theory largely fell out of favor as a way of…
Building software-driven systems that are easily understood becomes a challenge, with their ever-increasing complexity and autonomy. Accordingly, recent research efforts strive to aid in designing explainable systems. Nevertheless, a common…
Artificially intelligent systems, given a set of non-trivial ethical rules to follow, will inevitably be faced with scenarios which call into question the scope of those rules. In such cases, human reasoners typically will engage in…
Mathematics is one of the ways our species makes sense of this world and I believe that it is inherent in our thinking machinery. The mathematics we do in turn is dependent on the way we view our universe and ourselves. Lakoff and Nunez…
Some attack scientific rationality, others defend it, but both miss the point. What both parties take to be scientific rationality is actually a species of irrationality masquerading as scientific rationality. The current orthodox…
Interstellar exploration will advance human knowledge and culture in multiple ways. Scientifically, it will advance our understanding of the interstellar medium, stellar astrophysics, planetary science and astrobiology. In addition,…
Causal reasoning is essential for understanding decision-making about the behaviour of complex `ecosystems' of systems that underpin modern society, with security -- including issues around correctness, safety, resilience, etc. -- typically…
Causal reasoning is a cornerstone of human intelligence and a critical capability for artificial systems aiming to achieve advanced understanding and decision-making. This thesis delves into various dimensions of causal reasoning and…
The main objective of explanations is to transmit knowledge to humans. This work proposes to construct informative explanations for predictions made from machine learning models. Motivated by the observations from social sciences, our…
A general sketch of how the problem of space dimensionality depends on Anthropic arguments is presented. A new argument in favor of a stable scenario for space dimensionality for a time scale longer than that required for the existence of…