No-common-cause EPR-like Funny Business in Branching Space-times

There is “no EPR-like funny business” if (contrary to apparent fact)our world is as indeterministic as you wish, but is free from theEPR-like quantum mechanical phenomena such as is sometimes described interms of superluminal causation or correlation between distant events.The theory of branching space-times can be used to sharpen thetheoretical dichotomy between “EPR-like funny business” and “noEPR-like funny business”. Belnap (2002) offered two analyses of thedichotomy, and proved them equivalent. This essay adds two more, bothconnected with Reichenbach’s “principle of the common cause”, theprinciple that sends us hunting for a common-causal explanation ofdistant correlations. The two previous ideas of funny business and thetwo ideas introduced in this essay are proved to be all equivalent,which increases one’s confidence in the stability of (and helpfulnessof) the BST analysis of the dichotomy between EPR-like funny businessand its absence.

[1]  Tomasz Placek,et al.  Stochastic Outcomes in Branching Space-Time: Analysis of Bell's Theorem , 2000, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[2]  Tomasz Placek,et al.  Partial Indeterminism is Enough: A Branching Analysis of Bell-Type Inequalities , 2002 .

[3]  Thomas Müller,et al.  Branching space-time, modal logic, and the counterfactual conditional , 2002 .

[4]  Attempt to Resolve the EPR-Bell Paradox via Reichenbach's Concept of Common Cause , 1998, quant-ph/9806074.

[5]  Daniel Lerner,et al.  Evidence and Inference , 1959 .

[6]  Nuel D. Belnap,et al.  EPR-Like “Funny Business” in the Theory of Branching Space-Times , 2002 .

[7]  Tomasz Placek,et al.  Non-locality and Modality , 2002 .

[8]  Glenn L. McConagha,et al.  The American soldier , 1949 .

[9]  Ernest Nagel,et al.  The Structure of Science , 1962 .

[10]  Common Cause Completability of Classical and Quantum Probability Spaces , 2000 .

[11]  Thomas Müller,et al.  Against a Minimalist Reading of Bell's Theorem: Lessons from Fine , 2001, Synthese.

[12]  László E. Szabó,et al.  On Reichenbach's Common Cause Principle and Reichenbach's Notion of Common Cause , 1998, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[13]  H. Kyburg,et al.  How the laws of physics lie , 1984 .

[14]  Nuel Belnap,et al.  Branching space-time , 1992, Synthese.

[15]  J. Uffink.  The Principle of the Common Cause Faces the Bernstein Paradox , 1999, Philosophy of Science.

[16]  Branching space-time analysis of the GHZ theorem , 1995, quant-ph/9510002.

[17]  Tomasz Kowalski,et al.  Outcomes in Branching Space-Time and GHZ-Bell Theorems , 1999, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.

[18]  O. Penrose.  The Direction of Time , 1962 .

[19]  Paul F. Lazarsfeld,et al.  Continuities in Social Research: Studies in the Scope and Method of "The American Solider" , 1951 .

[20]  Reichenbach's common cause principle and quantum field theory , 1997 .

[21]  M. Rédei.  Reichenbach’s common cause principle and quantum correlations , 2002 .

[22]  Is There Superluminal Causation in Relativistic Quantum Field Theory , 1996 .

[23]  Frank Arntzenius,et al.  Transition Chances and Causation , 1997 .