Causation, Measurement Relevance and No-conspiracy in EPR

TL;DR

This paper reevaluates the no-conspiracy assumption in Bell inequality derivations, proposing that violations of measurement independence can be explained causally without implying conspiracy, by reinterpreting these conditions as measurement independence.

Contribution

It offers a reinterpretation of no-conspiracy conditions as measurement independence, allowing causal explanations of EPR correlations without implying conspiracy or backward causation.

Findings

Common cause explanations of EPR correlations are plausible.

Violations of measurement independence do not necessarily imply conspiracy.

Causal relevance of measurement operations can explain correlations.

Abstract

In this paper I assess the adequacy of no-conspiracy conditions employed in the usual derivations of the Bell inequality in the context of EPR correlations. First, I look at the EPR correlations from a purely phenomenological point of view and claim that common cause explanations of these cannot be ruled out. I argue that an appropriate common cause explanation requires that no-conspiracy conditions are re-interpreted as mere common cause-measurement independence conditions. In the right circumstances then, violations of measurement independence need not entail any kind of conspiracy (nor backwards in time causation). To the contrary, if measurement operations in the EPR context are taken to be causally relevant in a specific way to the experiment outcomes, their explicit causal role provides the grounds for a common cause explanation of the corresponding correlations.