How Causal Probabilities Might Fit into Our Objectively Indeterministic World

James H. Fetzer

James H. Fetzer

Henry Mehlberg

Henry Mehlberg, Robert S. Cohen

Grzegorz P. Karwasz

Contemporary physics, with two Einstein's theories (called "relativity" what can be interpreted erroneously) and with Heisenberg's principle of indeterminacy (better: "lack of epistemic determinism") are frequently interpreted as a removal of the causality from physics.We argue that this is wrong.There are no indications in physics, either classical or quantum, that physical laws are indeterministic, on the ontological level.On the other hand, both classical and quantum physics are, practically, indeterministic on the epistemic level: there are no means for us to predict the detailed future of the world.Additionally, essentially all physical principles, including the arrow of time and the conservation of energy could be, hypothetically, violated (with some exceptions in the world of heavier quarks, and probably, the cosmological arrow of time).However, in contrast to Hume's skepticism, we have no experimental evidence that the causality can be removed or even "hung on" in any case.The text contains some didactical-like issues, as well.

Gábor Hofer‐Szabó, Szilárd Szalay

In this paper, we revisit the concept of noncommuting common causes; refute two objections raised against them, the triviality objection and the lack of causal explanatory force; and explore how their existence modifies the EPR argument. More specifically, we show that 1) product states screening off all quantum correlations do not compromise noncommuting common causal explanations; 2) noncommuting common causes can satisfy the law of total probability; 3) perfect correlations can have indeterministic noncommuting common causes; and, as a combination of the above claims, 4) perfect correlations can have noncommuting common causes which are both nontrivial and satisfy the law of total probability.