Related papers: The Free Will Theorem
Quantum Mechanics is generally considered to be the ultimate theory capable of explaining the emergence of randomness by virtue of the quantum measurement process. Therefore, Quantum Mechanics can be thought of as God's wonderfully…
Free will is fundamental to morality, intuition of self, and normal functioning of the society. However, science does not provide a clear logical foundation for this idea. This paper considers the fundamental scientific argument against…
The basic question in the long-standing debate about free will (FW) is not whether FW can be demonstrated to exist nor even whether it exists, but instead how to define it scientifically. If FW is not dismissed as an illusion nor identified…
For a particle travelling through an interferometer, the trade-off between the available which-way information and the interference visibility provides a lucid manifestation of the quantum mechanical wave-particle duality. Here we analyze…
In quantum theory, the no-information-without-disturbance and no-free-information theorems express that those observables that do not disturb the measurement of another observable and those that can be measured jointly with any other…
Recently it has been claimed that no extension of quantum theory can have improved predictive power, the statement following, according to the authors, from the assumptions of free will and of the correctness of quantum predictions…
Ever since we have been in the possession of quantum theories without observers, such as Bohmian mechanics or the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) theory of spontaneous wave function collapse, a major challenge in the foundations of quantum…
Bell gave the now standard definition of a local hidden variable theory and showed that such theories cannot reproduce the predictions of quantum mechanics without violating his ``free will'' criterion: experimenters' measurement choices…
A succinct statement and justification of all the principles necessary to understand and evaluate interpretations of quantum mechanics is given. These principles provide strong constraints on interpretations. They imply the particle-like…
We address the question of whether the quantum-mechanical wave function $\Psi$ of a system is uniquely determined by any complete description $\Lambda$ of the system's physical state. We show that this is the case if the latter satisfies a…
Assuming that quantum mechanics is obeyed exactly after averaging over hidden variables, and considering models that obey both the hypotheses of free will and locality, we establish the form of all possible hidden-variable models that…
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…
A simple example is provided showing that violation of free will allows to reproduce the quantum mechanical predictions, and that the Clauser-Horne parameter can take the maximum value 4 for a proper choice.
We show that the axiom of choice, a basic yet controversial postulate of set theory, leads to revise the standard understanding of one of the pillars of our best physical theories, namely the no-signaling principle. While it is well known…
The three major theoretical principles of quantum mechanics relevant to its interpretation are: (T1), linearity; (T2), invariance under certain groups; and (T3) the orthogonality and isolation of the different branches of the state vector.…
The assumption that wave function collapse is a real occurrence has very interesting consequences - both experimental and theoretical. Besides predicting observable deviations from linear evolution, it implies that these deviations must…
Before Alan Turing made his crucial contributions to the theory of computation, he studied the question of whether quantum mechanics could throw light on the nature of free will. This article investigates the roles of quantum mechanics and…
It is shown that contrary to claims of Ref. [1] the formulated in the proper physical variables Low theorem [2] for soft photon emission does not require any modification. We also reject the criticism in Ref. [1] of the papers [3,4]. At the…
The problem of defining and locating free will (FW) in physics is studied. On basis of logical paradoxes, we argue that FW has a meta-theoretic character, like the concept of truth in Tarski's undefinability theorem. Free will exists…
The Born rule is part of the collapse axiom in the standard version of quantum theory, as presented by standard textbooks on the subject. We show here that its signature quadratic dependence follows from a single additional physical…