Comment on “Possible experience: From Boole to Bell” by Hess K. et al.

Henry Pierce Stapp

Andrei Yu. Khrennikov

We present comparative analysis of Gill-Weihs-Zeilinger-Zukowski arguments directed against Hess-Philipp anti-Bell arguments. In general we support Hess-Philipp viewpoint to the sequence of measurements in the EPR-Bohm experiments as stochastic time-like process. On the other hand, we support Gill-Weihs-Zeilinger-Zukowski arguments against the use of time-like correlations as the factor blocking the derivation of Bell-type inequalities. We presented our own time-analysis of measurements in the EPR-Bohm experiments based on the frequency approach to probability. Our analysis gives strong arguments in favour of local realism. Moreover, our frequency analysis supports the original EPR-idea that quantum mechnaics is not complete.

Richard David Gill, Gregor Weihs, Anton Zeilinger +1 more

A recent Letter by Hess and Philipp claims that Bell's theorem neglects the possibility of time-like dependence in local hidden variables, hence is not conclusive. Moreover the authors claim that they have constructed, in an earlier paper, a local realistic model of the EPR correlations. However, they themselves have neglected the experimenter's freedom to choose settings, while on the other hand, Bell's theorem can be formulated to cope with time-like dependence. This in itself proves that their toy model cannot satisfy local realism, but we also indicate where their proof of its local realistic nature fails.

S. J. Freedman, Eugene Paul Wigner

Itamar Pitowsky

In the mid-nineteenth century George Boole formulated his ‘conditions of possible experience’. These are equations and ineqaulities that the relative frequencies of (logically connected) events must satisfy. Some of Boole's conditions have been rediscovered in more recent years by physicists, including Bell inequalities, Clauser Horne inequalities, and many others. In this paper, the nature of Boole's conditions and their relation to propositional logic is explained, and the puzzle associated with their violation by quantum frequencies is investigated in relation to a variety of approaches to the interpretation of quantum mechanics.

S. J. Freedman, Eugene Paul Wigner