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Information Causality, the Tsirelson Bound, and the 'Being-Thus' of Things

Cuffaro, Michael E. (2017) Information Causality, the Tsirelson Bound, and the 'Being-Thus' of Things. [Preprint]

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Abstract

The principle of 'information causality' can be used to derive an upper bound---known as the 'Tsirelson bound'---on the strength of quantum mechanical correlations, and has been conjectured to be a foundational principle of nature. In this paper, however, I argue that the principle has not to date been sufficiently motivated to play this role; the motivations that have so far been given are either unsatisfactorily vague or else amount to little more than an appeal to intuition. I then consider how one might begin to successfully motivate the principle. I argue that a compelling way of so doing is to understand it as a generalisation of Einstein's principle of the mutually independent existence---the 'being-thus'---of spatially distant things, (re-)interpreted as a special methodological principle. More specifically: I describe an argument, due to Demopoulos, to the effect that the quantum-mechanical no-signalling condition can be viewed as a generalisation, appropriate to an irreducibly statistical theory such as quantum mechanics, of the Einsteinian principle. And I then argue that a compelling way to motivate information causality is to in turn consider it as a further generalisation of the Einsteinian principle that is appropriate to a theory of communication. I nevertheless describe important obstacles that must yet be overcome if the project of establishing information causality as a foundational principle of nature is to succeed.

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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
CreatorsEmailORCID
Cuffaro, Michael E.mike@michaelcuffaro.com
Additional Information: Comments are welcome.
Keywords: Tsirelson Bound, Information Causality, Mutually Independent Existence, Popescu-Rohrlich Boxes, Super-quantum correlations
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Computation/Information > Quantum
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Depositing User: Dr. Michael Cuffaro
Date Deposited: 29 Aug 2017 14:34
Last Modified: 29 Aug 2017 14:34
Item ID: 13373
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Computation/Information > Quantum
Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Date: 29 August 2017
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/13373

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