Realism or Locality: Which Should We Abandon?

TL;DR

This paper critiques the common response to Bell's inequality violations that rejects realism while keeping locality, arguing that locality inherently contains a form of realism, making such rejection incomplete.

Contribution

It challenges the standard interpretation by showing that locality implicitly assumes realism, thus questioning the validity of rejecting realism without reconsidering locality.

Findings

Locality contains an implicit form of realism.

Rejection of realism is only partial when locality is maintained.

The critique impacts interpretations of quantum mechanics.

Abstract

We reconsider the consequences of the observed violations of Bell's inequalities. Two common responses to these violations are: (i) the rejection of realism and the retention of locality, and (ii) the rejection of locality and the retention of realism. Here we critique response (i). We argue that locality contains an implicit form of realism, since in a world view that embraces locality, spacetime, with its usual, fixed topology, has properties independent of measurement. Hence we argue that response (i) is incomplete, in that its rejection of realism is only partial.