This paper aims at bringing together two debates in metaphysics that so far have been kept separate: the debate about determinism vs. indeterminism as de re modality on the one hand, and the debate about persistence on the other hand. Both debates significantly involve talk of things. We will show that working out a proper semantics for singular terms and an accompanying theory of things, motiv...

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen (EPR) argued that the quantum-mechanical probabilistic description of physical reality had to be incomplete, in order to avoid an instantaneous action between distant measurements. This suggested the need for additional “hidden variables”, allowing for the recovery of determinism and locality, but such a solution has been disproved experimentally. Here, I present an...

Cellular automata are classes of mathematical systems characterized by discreteness (in space, time, and state values), determinism, and local interaction. Using symbolic dynamical theory, we coarse-grain the temporal evolution orbits of cellular automata. By means of formal languages and automata theory, we study the evolution complexity of the elementary cellular automaton with local rule num...

This paper provides an overview of an approach to coalgebraic modelling and refinement of state-based software components, summing up some basic results and introducing a discussion on the interplay between behavioural and classical data refinement. The approach builds on coalgebra theory as a suitable tool to capture observational semantics and to base an abstract characterisation of possible ...

As classical planning branches out to consider richer models, many extensions approach decision theoretic models. Decision theory research uses models like MDPs and POMDPs which are very expressive, but can be difficult to scale. Whereas, planning research concentrates quite a bit on scalability. Our previous work and future doctoral thesis concentrates on extending the planning model toward pr...

The interface between classical physics and quantum physics is explained from the point of view of quantum information theory (Feynman Processes). The interpretation depends on a hefty sacrifice: the classical determinism or the arrow of time. The wave-particle duality steams from the qubit model, as the root of creation and annihilation of possibilities. A few key experiments are briefly revie...

This paper takes a critical look at the benefits provided by state-of-the-art deterministic execution techniques. Specifically, we look at four applications of deterministic execution: debugging, fault-tolerant replication, testing, and security. For each application, we discuss what an ideal system would provide, and then look at how deterministic systems compare to the ideal. Further, we disc...

Many signals measured from the nervous system exhibit apparently random variability that is usually considered to be noise. The development of chaos theory has revealed that such random appearing variability may not, in fact, be random, but rather may be deterministic behavior that can reveal important information about the system's underlying mechanisms. We present some new methods for disting...

In his book Freedom of the Will: A Conditional Analysis, Ferenc Huoranszki (2011) tries to defend improved and amended version of the conditional analysis of free will. In my critical review, taking chapters 2 and 4 of his book as the most crucial for his theory, I try to show that incompatibilism is still more persuasive and that amended conditional analysis is not compatible with determinism....

In this contribution, we reconsider the notion of determinism for max-plus automata by including quantitative aspect in its definition. A determinization procedure adapted to so-called weight-determinism is proposed. The motivation generalize results based on automata.