Is quantum mechanics compatible with a deterministic universe? Two interpretations of quantum probabilities

Two problems will be considered: the question of hidden parameters and the problem of Kolmogorovity of quantum probabilities. Both of them will be analyzed from the point of view of two distinct understandings of quantum mechanical probabilities. Our analysis will be focused, as a particular example, on the Aspect-type EPR experiment. It will be shown that the quantum mechanical probabilities appearing in this experiment can be consistently understood as conditional probabilities without any paradoxical consequences. Therefore, nothing implies in the Aspect experiment that quantum theory is incompatible with a deterministic universe.     

The Relativity of Indeterminacy

A long-standing tradition, largely present in both the physical and the philosophical literature, regards the advent of (special) relativity—with its block-universe picture—as the failure of any indeterministic program in physics. On the contrary, in this paper, we note that upholding reasonable principles of finiteness of information hints at a picture of the physical world that should be both relativistic and indeterministic. We thus rebut the block-universe picture by assuming that fundamental indeterminacy itself should also be regarded as a relative property when considered in a relativistic scenario. We discuss the consequence that this view may have when correlated randomness is introduced, both in the classical case and in the quantum one.     

A defense of indeterminism

My goal is to defend the indeterminist approach to vagueness, according to which a borderline vague utterance is neither true nor false. Indeterminism appears to contradict bivalence and the disquotational schema for truth. I agree that indeterminism compels us to modify each of these principles. Kit Fine has defended indeterminism by claiming that ordinary ambiguous sentences are neither true nor false when one disambiguation is true and the other is false. But even if Fine is right about sentences, his point does not seem to generalize to utterances. What the indeterminist needs -- and what ordinary ambiguity does not provide -- is an ambiguous utterance where what is being said is indeterminate between two different propositions. I will show that such cases exist. These cases imply that the modifications that indeterminism makes to bivalence and the disquotational schema are required independently of indeterminism, in fact independently of vagueness.     

On the Unnikrishnan resolution of the EPR puzzle

It is shown that Unnikrishnan’s theory, which is believed to be a local realist theory resolving the EPR puzzle, in two possible interpretations is either realist and nonlocal or local and non-realist.     

Correlations and Entanglement in Probability Theory

We generalize the classical probability frame by adopting a wider family of random variables that includes non-deterministic ones. The frame that emerges is known to host a “classical” extension of quantum mechanics. We discuss the notion of probabilistic correlation and show that it includes two kinds of correlation: a classical one, which occurs for both deterministic and indeterministic observables, and a non-classical one, which occurs only for indeterministic observables. The latter will be called probabilistic entanglement and represents a property of intrinsically random systems, not necessarily quantum. It appears possible to separate the two kinds of correlation and characterize them by numerical functions which satisfy a simple product rule. This paper was written a few months before the death of S. Bugajski: the first author recalls him as a creative scientist, a great human personality, and a dear friend.