The Default Specification Principle (Slide set)

Abstract

This talk presents the default specification principle, which says: the absence of an explicit specification entails all possible default specification outputs. Roughly, this means that the failure to explicitly specify something entails that of any of the outputs which could possibly obtain as a consequence of carrying out that specification, all are available as "live possibilities". Although in a certain sense tautological, its value lies in that its formal expression requires the formulation of a novel framework, default specification theory, which, when applied against a background of space, leads to the the concept of probability, and which, when applied against a background of space and time, leads to a generalization of the Born Rule. We will use the language of category theory to formally express this framework.