This paper was composed in accordance with guidelines from Amer. J. Physics as a reply to a paper (quant-ph/9712003) with the same title by N. David Mermin
David Mermin's recent paper with the same title as this one makes it clear that his claim to have found a gap in my reasoning rests on his claim that my argument violates a criterion for meaningfulness of counterfactual statements that I myself had set down. I set down no such requirement. But I am willing to accept it as a conservative sufficient condition. This already entails, within my proof, that nature must have a deep structure that extends beyond what actually occurs. It imposes, without appeal to the notion of determinism or hidden variables, constraints connecting, at the macroscopic level, what did occur to what would have occurred if certain quantum choices had gone differently. All the statements in the proof have natural meanings within the context of an examination of that deep structure.
We emphasize the role of the precise correlations loophole in attempting to connect the CHSH type inequalities with the EPR-argument. The possibility to test theories with hidden variables experimentally by using such inequalities is questioned. The role of the original Bell inequality is highlighted. The interpretation of the CHSH inequality in the spirit of Bohr, as a new test of incompatibility, is presented. The positions of Bohr, Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen, Bell, Clauser, Horne, Shimony, Holt, De Broglie, Hertz, and Boltzmann on interrelation of theory and experiment are enlightened.
In a recent paper [arXiv:1703.11003] on this journal Stephen Boughn argued that quantum mechanics does not require nonlocality of any kind and that the common interpretation of Bell theorem as a nonlocality result is based on a misunderstanding. In this note I argue that the Boughn arguments, that summarize views widespread in certain areas of the foundations of quantum mechanics, are based on an incorrect reading of the presuppositions of the EPR argument and the Bell theorem and, as a consequence, are totally unfounded.
In a recent paper Griffiths [38] has argued, based on the consistent histories interpretation, that Hilbert space quantum mechanics (QM) is noncontextual. According to Griffiths the problem of contextuality disappears if the apparatus is "designed and operated by a competent experimentalist" and we accept the Single Framework Rule (SFR). We will argue from a representational realist stance that the conclusion is incorrect due to the misleading understanding provided by Griffiths to the meaning of quantum contextuality and its relation to physical reality and measurements. We will discuss how t…
By filtering out the philosophic component we can be said that the EPR-paper was directed against the straightforward interpretation of the Heisenberg's uncertainty principle or more generally the Bohr's complementarity principle. The latter expresses contextuality of quantum measurements: dependence of measurement's output on the complete experimental arrangement. However, Bell restructured the EPR-argument against complementarity to justify nonlocal theories with hidden variables of the Bohmian mechanics' type. Then this Bell's kind of nonlocality - {\it subquantum nonlocality} - was lifted …
Yes. That is my polemical reply to the titular question in Travis Norsen's self-styled "polemical response to Howard Wiseman's recent paper." Less polemically, I am pleased to see that on two of my positions --- that Bell's 1964 theorem is different from Bell's 1976 theorem, and that the former does not include Bell's one-paragraph heuristic presentation of the EPR argument --- Norsen has made significant concessions. In his response, Norsen admits that "Bell's recapitulation of the EPR argument in [the relevant] paragraph leaves something to be desired," that it "disappoints" and is "problema…
Without Niels Bohr, QBism would be nothing. But QBism is not Bohr. This paper attempts to show that, despite a popular misconception, QBism is no minor tweak to Bohr's interpretation of quantum mechanics. It is something quite distinct. Along the way, we lay out three tenets of QBism in some detail: 1) The Born Rule---the foundation of what quantum theory means for QBism---is a normative statement. It is about the decision-making behavior any individual agent should strive for; it is not a descriptive "law of nature" in the usual sense. 2) All probabilities, including all quantum probabilities…
This note is a part of my efforts for getting rid of nonlocality from quantum mechanics (QM). Quantum nonlocality is two faced Janus, one face is Lüders projection nonlocality, another face is Bell nonlocality. This paper is devoted to disillusion of the latter. The main casualty of Bell's model with hidden variables is that it straightforwardly contradicts to the Heinsenberg's uncertainty and generally Bohr's complementarity principles. Thus, we do not criticize the derivation or interpretation of the Bell inequality (as was done by numerous authors). Our critique is directed against the mode…
