Related papers: The Free-Will Postulate in Quantum Mechanics
The concept of 'super-indeterminism' captures the notion that the free choice assumption of orthodox quantum mechanics necessitates only the following requirement: an agent's free-choice performance in the selection of measurement settings…
There are several important philosophical problems to which quantum mechanics is often said to have made significant contributions: - Determinism: quantum theory has been taken to refute determinism; -Free Will: in turn, this is thought to…
On the basis of three physical axioms, we prove that if the choice of a particular type of spin 1 experiment is not a function of the information accessible to the experimenters, then its outcome is equally not a function of the information…
Recently, it has been argued that quantum mechanics is a complete theory, and that different quantum states do necessarily correspond to different elements of reality, under the assumptions that quantum mechanics is correct and that…
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…
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…
We revisit the vexed question of how unpredictability can arise in a deterministic universe, focusing on unitary quantum theory. We discuss why quantum unpredictability is irrelevant for the possibility of what some people call `free-will',…
In this article, we propose to use the formalism of quantum mechanics to describe and explain the so-called "abnormal" behaviour of agents in certain decision or choice contexts. The basic idea is to postulate that the preferences of these…
According to quantum theory, pure physical states correspond to equivalence classes of state vectors, where any two members of one class differ by a complex factor. The point is that such a factor does not change the probability for the…
This paper argues for the following three theses: (1) There is a clear reason to prefer physical theories with deterministic dynamical equations: such theories are maximally rich in information and usually also maximally simple. (2) There…
The impression of free will is the feeling according to which our choices are neither imposed from our inside nor from outside. It is the sense we are the ultimate cause of our acts. In direct opposition with the universal determinism, the…
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,…
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…
From what is known today about the elementary particles of matter, and the forces that control their behavior, it may be observed that still a host of obstacles must be overcome that are standing in the way of further progress of our…
Role of axiom of choice in quantum measurement is highlighted by suggesting that the conscious observer chooses the outcome from a mixed state. Further, in a periodically repeating universe, these outcomes must be pre-recorded within the…
It is shown that the initial conditions in the quasi-Heisenberg quantization scheme can be set at the initial cosmological singularity per se. This possibility is provided by finiteness of some quantities, namely momentums of the dynamical…
If the block universe view is correct, the future and the past have similar status and one would expect physical theories to involve final as well as initial boundary conditions. A plausible consistency condition between the initial and…
A new interpretation of quantum mechanics is proposed according to which precedence, freedom and novelty play central roles. This is based on a modification of the postulates for quantum theory given by Masanes and Muller. We argue that…
The predictions that quantum theory makes about the outcomes of measurements are generally probabilistic. This has raised the question whether quantum theory can be considered complete, or whether there could exist alternative theories that…
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…