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Bell's Theorem, Nonseparability, and Spacetime Individuation in Quantum Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Darrin W. Belousek
Darrin W. Belousek*
Affiliation:
University of Notre Dame
*
†Department of Philosophy, 336 O'Shaughnessy Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556; e-mail: [email protected].
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Abstract

We first examine Howard's analysis of the Bell factorizability condition in terms of ‘separability’ and ‘locality’ and then consider his claims that the violations of Bell's inequality by the statistical predictions of quantum mechanics should be interpreted in terms of ‘nonseparability’ rather than ‘nonlocality’ and that ‘nonseparability’ implies the failure of spacetime as a principle of individuation for quantum-mechanical systems. We will argue that his argument for the first claim is less than compelling and that any argument for the second claim will be interpretation-dependent and, hence, not generally valid.

Type
Foundations of Quantum Mechanics
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 66 , Issue S3: Supplement. Proceedings of the 1998 Biennial Meetings of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 1999 , 1999 , pp. S28 - S46
Copyright
Copyright © 1999 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Financial support provided by the John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values and the Zahm Research Travel Fund, University of Notre Dame. Some of this research was conducted while a Visiting Scholar in the History and Philosophy of Science Department, Cambridge University, during the Lent term 1997. This paper is a revised version of a chapter from my dissertation, “Ontological Commitments and Theory Appraisal in the Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics” (Notre Dame, 1998). My thanks to Jim Cushing and Don Howard for many stimulating conversations on these topics.

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