Related papers: Democritus as Taoist
It is argued that properties of Democritus' atoms parallel those of volume forms in differential geometry. This kind of atoms has not "size" of finite magnitude. ----- Se arguye que las propiedades de los atomos de Democrito son paralelas a…
Two people may claim both to be naturalists, but have divergent conceptions of basic elements of the natural world which lead them to mean different things when they talk about laws of nature, or states, or the role of mathematics in…
I argue that, on a judicious reading of two existing criteria--one syntactic and the other semantic--dual theories can be taken to be empirically equivalent. The judicious reading is straightforward, but leads to the surprising conclusion…
The continuum has been one of the most controversial topics in mathematics since the time of the Greeks. Some mathematicians, such as Euclid and Cantor, held the position that a line is composed of points, while others, like Aristotle, Weyl…
The main aim of this paper is to make a remark about the relation between (i) dualities between theories, as `duality' is understood in physics and (ii) equivalence of theories, as `equivalence' is understood in logic and philosophy. The…
This article is devoted to the tactical game theoretical interpretation of dialectics. Dialectical games are considered as abstractly as well as models of the internal dialogue and reflection. The models related to the representation theory…
This is a philosophical paper. It claims that there is a gap to be filled in the relationship between complexity theory (CT) and quantum theory (QT). This gap concerns two very distinct understandings of time. The paper provides the ground…
We compare and contrast the basic principles of two philosophies: Bayesianism and relationalism. These two philosophies are both based upon criteria of rationality. The analogy invoked in such a comparison seems rather apt when discussing…
Many theories of physical interest, which admit a Hamiltonian description, exhibit symmetries under a particular class of non - strictly canonical transformation, known as dynamical similarities. The presence of such symmetries allows a…
Different aspects of the self-dual (anti-self-dual) action of the Ashtekar canonical formalism are discussed. In particular, we study the equivalences and differences between the various versions of such an action. Our analysis may be…
We define an equivalence relation on propositions and a proof system where equivalent propositions have the same proofs. The system obtained this way resembles several known non-deterministic and algebraic lambda-calculi.
This article supports the epistemological claim that sound human reasoning about ultimate knowledge is either foundational or circularly justified. In particular, questions which naturally arise in theology, philosophy, and related…
We provide a general account of parallelism in discourse, and apply it to the special case of resolving possible readings for instances of VP ellipsis. We show how several problematic examples are accounted for in a natural and…
Isaac Newton, in popular imagination the Ur-scientist, was an outstanding humanist scholar. His researches on, among others, ancient philosophy, are thorough and appear to be connected to and fit within his larger philosophical and…
Causality has been often confused with the notion of determinism. It is mandatory to separate the two notions in view of the debate about quantum foundations. Quantum theory provides an example of causal not-deterministic theory. Here we…
Shannon's notion of relative information between two physical systems can function as foundation for statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics, without referring to subjectivism or idealism. It can also represent a key missing element in…
Temporal logics are an obvious high-level descriptive companion formalism to dynamical systems which model behavior as deterministic evolution of state over time. A wide variety of distinct temporal logics applicable to dynamical systems…
This is my working paper on a proposed logical framework for the practice of mathematics, which is paralleled by philosophical considerations and a computer implementation (a variant of Automath). Updated 10/27/2016 with a version from…
We investigate quantum correlations in time in different approaches. We assume that temporal correlations should be treated in an even-handed manner with spatial correlations. We compare the pseudo-density matrix formalism with several…
The hypothesis that philosophy is driven by difference/innovation is checked in a quantitative manner. This was performed by assigning grades to eight main philosophical features with respect to seven prominent philosophers, which allowed…