# Contextuality: It's a Feature, not a Bug

## TL;DR

This paper explores how considering interactions as fundamental to measurement processes leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories, suggesting that contextuality is a feature enabling empirical traceability of interactions, not a flaw.

## Contribution

It introduces a framework where interactions are essential for measurement, resulting in a class of theories that treat contextuality as a feature for empirical access to interactions.

## Key findings

- Contextuality arises naturally when interactions are fundamental to measurement.
- The measurement problem is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions.
- All such theories, including quantum mechanics, face the measurement problem due to interaction requirements.

## Abstract

Results of measurements give legitimacy to a physical theory. What if acquiring these results in the first place necessitates what the same theory considers to be an interaction? In this note, we assume that theories account for interactions so that they are empirically traceable, and that observations necessarily go with such an interaction with the observed system. We investigate consequences of this assumption: The unfolding language game, inspired by "quantum logic," leads to a class of contextual and probabilistic theories. Contextuality becomes a means to render interactions, thus also measurements, empirically tangible. The measurement "problem" arises in all such theories, not only quantum mechanics: It is a consequence of the need for empirical evidence of interactions. And a consequence of the converse need for an interaction when obtaining that empirical evidence.