EPR CORRELATIONS, BELL INEQUALITIES AND COMMON CAUSE SYSTEMS

Gábor Hofer‐Szabó

Published Mar 5, 2014• 1 citation

Abstract

Standard common causal explanations of the EPR situation assume a so-called joint common cause system that is a common cause for all correlations. However, the assumption of a joint common cause system together with some other physically motivated assumptions concerning locality and no-conspiracy results in various Bell inequalities. Since Bell inequalities are violated for appropriate measurement settings, a local, non-conspiratorial joint common causal explanation of the EPR situation is ruled out. But why do we assume that a common causal explanation of a set of correlation consists in finding a joint common cause system for all correlations and not just in finding separate common cause systems for the different correlations? What are the \nperspectives of a local, non-conspiratorial separate common causal explanation for the EPR scenario? And finally, how do Bell inequalities relate to the weaker assumption of separate common cause systems? \n

DOI: 10.1142/9789814596299_0013

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