Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T06:18:41.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

David Lewis Meets John Bell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeremy Butterfield
Jeremy Butterfield*
Affiliation:
Philosophy Faculty, Cambridge University
*
‡Send reprint requests to the author, Jesus College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, CB5 8BL, U.K.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The violation of the Bell inequality means that measurement-results in the two wings of the experiment cannot be screened off from one another, in the sense of Reichenbach. But does this mean that there is causation between the results? I argue that it does, according to Lewis's counterfactual analysis of causation and his associated views. The reason lies in his doctrine that chances evolve by conditionalization on intervening history. This doctrine collapses the distinction between the conditional probabilities that are used to state screening off, and the counterfactuals with chance consequents that are used to state lack of causation. I briefly discuss ways to evade my argument.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 26 - 43
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1992

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

For comments and conversations, I would like to thank an anonymous referee; audiences at the Universities of Cambridge, Illinois at Chicago, Northwestern, Princeton, Stanford and Western Ontario, and the 1988 conference of the British Society for the Philosophy of Science; Harvey Brown, Nancy Cartwright, Rob Clifton, and especially David Lewis.

§

Note added in proof: R. Clifton (forthcoming) has strengthened the argument of this paper by considering the strict correlations in a 3-particle thought experiment due to Greenberger et al.: He shows that these correlations and locality together imply deterministic Lewisian causation between measurement-results.

References

Butterfield, J. (1989), “A Space-time Approach to the Bell Inequality”, in Cushing, J. and McMullin, E. (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 114–144.Google Scholar
Butterfield, J. (forthcoming), “Bell's Theorem: What It Takes”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 42.Google Scholar
Clauser, J. and Horne, M. (1974), “Experimental Consequences of Objective Local Theories”, Physical Review D: 526–535.Google Scholar
Clifton, R. (forthcoming), “Reviving the Counterfactual Approach to Quantum Non-locality”.Google Scholar
Hellman, G. (1982), “Stochastic Einstein-Locality and the Bell Theorems”, Synthese 53: 461–504.10.1007/BF00486162CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Howard, D. (1989), “Holism, Separability, and the Metaphysical Implications of the Bell Experiments”, in Cushing, J. and McMullin, E. (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 224–253.Google Scholar
Jarrett, J. P. (1984), “On the Physical Significance of the Locality Conditions in the Bell Arguments”, Nous 18: 569–589.10.2307/2214878CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, D. (1973), Counterfactuals. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986a), On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. (1986b), Philosophical Papers. vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Redhead, M. (1987), Incompleteness, Nonlocality and Realism: A Prolegomenon to the Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Redhead, M. (1989), “Nonfactorizability, Stochastic Causality, and Passion-at-a-Distance”, in Cushing, J. and McMullin, E. (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 145–153.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, H. (1971), The Direction of Time. Edited by Reichenbach, Maria. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, W. (1971), “Statistical Explanation”, in W. C. Salmon, with contributions by R. C. Jeffrey and J. G. Green, Statistical Explanation and Statistical Relevance. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, pp. 29–87.10.2307/j.ctt6wrd9p.6CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimony, A. (1986), “Events and Processes in the Quantum World”, in Penrose, R. and Isham, C. (eds.), Quantum Concepts in Space and Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 184–203.Google Scholar
Shimony, A. (1989), “Search for a Worldview which can Accommodate our Knowledge of Microphysics”, in Cushing and McMullin (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 25–37.Google Scholar
Suppes, P. and Zanotti, M. (1976), “On the Determinism of Hidden Variable Theories with Strict Correlation and Conditional Statistical Independence of Observables”, in Suppes, P. (ed.), Logic and Probability in Quantum Mechanics. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 445–455.10.1007/978-94-010-9466-5_21CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teller, P. (1989), “Relativity, Relational Holism, and the Bell Inequalities”, in Cushing, J. and McMullin, E. (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 208–223.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, B. ([1982] 1989), “The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Implications of Bell's Inequality”, in Cushing, J. and McMullin, E. (eds.), Philosophical Consequences of Quantum Theory: Reflections on Bell's Theorem. South Bend: Notre Dame Press, pp. 97–113. (Originally published in Synthese 52: 25–38.)Google Scholar