Abstract
EPR-like phenomena are (presumably) indeterministic, but they furthermore suggest that our world involves seeming-strange “funny business.” Without invoking any heavy mathematics, the theory of branching space-times offers two apparently quite different ways in which EPR-like funny business goes beyond simple indeterminism. (1) The first is a modal version of a Bell-like correlation: There exist two space-like separated indeterministic initial events whose families of outcomes are nevertheless modally correlated. That is, although the occurrence of each outcome of each of the two space-like separated initial events is separately possible, some joint occurrence of their outcomes (one from each) is impossible. (2) The second sounds like superluminal causation: A certain initial event can bear a cause-like relation to a certain outcome event without being in the causal past of that outcome. The two accounts of EPR-like funny business are proved equivalent, a result that supports the claim of each as useful to mark the line between mere indeterminism and EPR-like funny business.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Belnap, N. (1992) Branching space-time, Synthese 92, 385–434.
Belnap, N. (1999) Concrete transitions, in G. Meggle (ed.) Actions, Norms, Values: Discussions with Georg Henrik von Wright, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 227–236.
Belnap, N., Perloff, M., and Xu, M. (2001) Facing the Future: Agents and Their Choices in Our Indeterminist World, Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York.
McCall, S. (1994) A Model of the Universe: Time, Probability, and Decision, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Placek, T. (2000) Is Nature Deterministic?, Jagiellonian University Press, Krakow.
Rakic, N. (1997) Common-Sense Time and Special Relativity, Ph.D. thesis, University of Amsterdam.
Szabó, L. and Belnap, N. (1996) Branching space-time analysis of the GHZ theorem, Foundations of Physics 26(8), 989–1002.
von Kutschera, F. (1993) Causation, Journal of Philosophical Logic 22, 563–588.
Xu, M. (1997) Causation in branching time (i): transitions, events and causes, Synthese 112, 137–192.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Belnap, N. (2002). EPR-Like “Funny Business” in the Theory of Branching Space-Times. In: Placek, T., Butterfield, J. (eds) Non-locality and Modality. NATO Science Series, vol 64. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0385-8_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0385-8_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-0662-3
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0385-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive