Contextuality, Fine-Tuning, and Teleological Explanation

TL;DR

This paper explores the nature of contextuality in quantum mechanics, proposing it as a form of fine-tuning linked to teleological features, and introduces new mathematical insights into its analysis.

Contribution

It offers a novel interpretation of contextuality as fine-tuning, connects it to teleological explanations, and presents new mathematical results on contextuality and negative probabilities.

Findings

Preparation contextuality is a form of fine-tuning.

Measurement contextuality can be explained by a global causal constraint.

Negative probabilities can emerge from classical models with epistemic restrictions.

Abstract

I assess various proposals for the source of the intuition that there is something problematic about contextuality, ultimately concluding that contextuality is best thought of in terms of fine-tuning. I then argue that as with other fine-tuning problems in quantum mechanics, this behaviour can be understood as a manifestation of teleological features of physics. Finally I discuss several formal mathematical frameworks that have been used to analyse contextuality and consider how their results should be interpreted by scientific realists. In the course of this discussion I obtain several new mathematical results - I demonstrate that preparation contextuality is a form of fine-tuning, I show that measurement contextuality can be explained by appeal to a global constraint forbidding closed causal loops, and I demonstrate how negative probabilities can arise from a classical ontological model together with an epistemic restriction.