Abstract
The Common Cause Principle, stating that correlations are either consequences of a direct causal link between the correlated events or are due to a common cause, is assessed from the perspective of its viability and it is argued that at present we do not have strictly empirical evidence that could be interpreted as disconfirming the principle. In particular it is not known whether spacelike correlations predicted by quantum field theory can be explained by properly localized common causes, and EPR correlations are known to be unexplainable only by common causes that are required to satisfy conditions that are empirically not tested.
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Notes
- 1.
After this paper was completed, the author was informed that the conjecture has been proved by Marczyk and Wronski (2013). See also their review paper in this volume: M. Marczyk and L. Wronski: “A Note on Strong Causal Closedness and Completability of Classical Probability Spaces”.
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Supported in part by the Hungarian Scientific Research Found (OTKA). Contract number: K100715.
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Rédei, M. (2014). Assessing the Status of the Common Cause Principle. In: Galavotti, M., Dieks, D., Gonzalez, W., Hartmann, S., Uebel, T., Weber, M. (eds) New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective, vol 5. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04382-1_29
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