Beyond Causal Explanation: Einstein's Principle Not Reichenbach's.

Michael Silberstein,Timothy Mcdevitt,William Mark Stuckey

doi:10.3390/e23010114

Michael Silberstein, Timothy Mcdevitt + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/e23010114

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Abstract

Our account provides a local, realist and fully non-causal principle explanation for EPR correlations, contextuality, no-signalling, and the Tsirelson bound. Indeed, the account herein is fully consistent with the causal structure of Minkowski spacetime. We argue that retrocausal accounts of quantum mechanics are problematic precisely because they do not fully transcend the assumption that causal or constructive explanation must always be fundamental. Unlike retrocausal accounts, our principle explanation is a complete rejection of Reichenbach’s Principle. Furthermore, we will argue that the basis for our principle account of quantum mechanics is the physical principle sought by quantum information theorists for their reconstructions of quantum mechanics. Finally, we explain why our account is both fully realist and psi-epistemic.

Highlights

Explanation: Einstein’s Principle NotThere is a class of interpretations or accounts of quantum mechanics (QM) called retrocausal theories
Since it is precisely this correlation function that is responsible for the Tsirelson bound [60,61,62], we see that NPRF is responsible for the Tsirelson bound. This answers Bub’s question, “why is the world quantum and not classical, and why is it quantum rather than superquantum, i.e., why the Tsirelson bound for quantum correlations?” [53,63,64] (Figure 7). This tells us why higher-dimensional generalized probability theories are not realized in Nature, i.e., the conservation principle for the fundamental two-bit system must be a qubit to accord with NPRF
We have offered a principle account of EPR correlations and quantum contextuality by applying a generalization of the relativity principle (“no preferred reference frame,” NPRF) to the measurement of Planck’s constant h to underwrite the qubit Hilbert space structure with its SU(2)/SO(3) transformation properties

Summary

Introduction

There is a class of interpretations or accounts of quantum mechanics (QM) called retrocausal theories (for more historical background and comparisons of different models, see [1,2]). Price have come the farthest in moving away from the dynamical/causal explanatory bias Is how they describe Wharton’s view [1]: The account is a retrocausal picture based on Hamilton’s principle and the symmetric constraint of both initial and final boundary conditions to construct equations of motion from a Lagrangian, and is a natural setting for a perspectival interventionist account of causality. We posited an AGC mode of explanation for EPR correlations, among other things, that uses the initial and final states of the system, plus the AGC, to provide a spatiotemporal explanation of said correlations Even those somewhat open to our relatively “radical” project of completely jettisoning Reichenbach’s Principle and the dynamical and causal explanatory bias behind it, found our specific account formally daunting, vague, and insufficiently precise. In the Postscript we will return to the question of why our principle account is both realist and psi-epistemic, the place of contextuality, etc

Principle Versus Constructive Explanation

QM from NPRF Whence Bell State Entanglement

The Bell Spin States

NPRF and the Bell State Correlation Function

Discussion