Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs. Yet, can indeterminism affect also the past, making it open as well? We show that by upholding principles of finiteness of information one can entail such a possibility. We provide a toy model that shows how the past could be fundamentally indeterminate, while also explaining the intuitive (and observed) asymmetry between the past-which can be remembered, at least partially-and the future-which is impossible to fully predict.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10701-022-00645-y | DOI Listing |
Found Phys
November 2022
Group of Applied Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva 4, 1211 Switzerland.
Discussions on indeterminism in physics focus on the possibility of an open future, i.e. the possibility of having potential alternative future events, the realisation of one of which is not fully determined by the present state of affairs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDispersive movements are often thought to be multicausal and driven by individual body size, sex, conspecific density, environmental variation, personality, and/or other variables. Yet such variables often do not account for most of the variation among dispersive movements in nature, leaving open the possibility that dispersion may be indeterministic. We assessed the amount of variation in 24 h movement distances that could be accounted for by potential drivers of displacement with a large empirical dataset of movement distances performed by Fowler's Toads () on the northern shore of Lake Erie at Long Point, Ontario (2002-2021, incl.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProg Biophys Mol Biol
December 2015
Department of Physiology, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48201, USA. Electronic address:
Phenomenology aspires to philosophical analysis of humans' subjective experience while it strives to avoid pitfalls of subjectivity. The first step towards naturalizing phenomenology - making phenomenology scientific - is to reconcile phenomenology with modern physics, on the one hand, and with modern cellular and molecular neuroscience, on the other hand. In this paper, free will is chosen for a case study to demonstrate the feasibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNature
May 2013
Department of Applied Mathematics & Statistics, The Johns Hopkins University, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA.
The idea of 'frozen-in' magnetic field lines for ideal plasmas is useful to explain diverse astrophysical phenomena, for example the shedding of excess angular momentum from protostars by twisting of field lines frozen into the interstellar medium. Frozen-in field lines, however, preclude the rapid changes in magnetic topology observed at high conductivities, as in solar flares. Microphysical plasma processes are a proposed explanation of the observed high rates, but it is an open question whether such processes can rapidly reconnect astrophysical flux structures much greater in extent than several thousand ion gyroradii.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhilos Ethics Humanit Med
May 2009
Department of Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine, Ernst Moritz Arndt University, Greifswald, Germany.
It is generally claimed that there exist exceptional circumstances when taking human life may be approved and when such actions may be justified on moral grounds. Precise guidelines in the medical field for making such decisions concerning patients who are terminally ill or have irreparable injuries incompatible with a bearable life, are difficult to establish. Recommendations that take the particular logical form of a rule, such as "in dubio pro vita", "when in doubt favour life") have been suggested and in some countries incorporated into legal texts (Germany).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!