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Epr, Bell, and Collapse: A Route Around “Stochastic” Hidden Variables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Geoffrey Hellman
Geoffrey Hellman*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Indiana University
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Abstract

Two EPR arguments are reviewed, for their own sake, and for the purpose of clarifying the status of “stochastic“ hidden variables. The first is a streamlined version of the EPR argument for the incompleteness of quantum mechanics. The role of an anti-instrumentalist (“realist”) interpretation of certain probability statements is emphasized. The second traces out one horn of a central foundational dilemma, the collapse dilemma; complex modal reasoning, similar to the original EPR, is used to derive determinateness (of all spin components of two spin-½ particles in the singlet state) from just (a form of) weak locality, result definiteness, and an assumption on propensities based on conservation. Theories meeting these conditions are therefore constrained by the Bell inequalities. Neither controversial assumptions of “strong locality” (“factorability”) nor of determinism are employed in the derivation. The categories of “stochastic hidden variables” are then analyzed; one can focus on “quasi-definite” theories, without loss of generality. A means of excluding these is proposed, based on a demand that certain ideal cases be accurately treated. Theorems from quantum measurement theory, sometimes cited as showing that such cases are not physically possible, are found inapplicable.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 1987 , pp. 558 - 576
Copyright
Copyright © 1987 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Harvey Brown, Jeffrey Bub, Michael Friedman, and Michael Redhead for helpful discussion of an earlier version of this paper, and to Arthur Fine and Abner Shimony for helpful correspondence.

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