Related papers: Causality re-established
Certain approaches to quantum gravity, such as the one based on the concept of purely virtual particles (fakeons), sacrifice the cause-effect relation at very small scales to reconcile renormalizability with unitarity. Other developments…
The idea that events obey a definite causal order is deeply rooted in our understanding of the world and at the basis of the very notion of time. But where does causal order come from, and is it a necessary property of nature? We address…
Quantum theory is a probabilistic theory with fixed causal structure. General relativity is a deterministic theory but where the causal structure is dynamic. It is reasonable to expect that quantum gravity will be a probabilistic theory…
Causality in quantum field theory is defined by the vanishing of field commutators for space-like separations. However, this does not imply a direction for causal effects. Hidden in our conventions for quantization is a connection to the…
It is often argued that bottom-up causation under a physicalist, reductionist worldview precludes free will in the libertarian sense. On the one hand, the paradigm of classical mechanics makes determinism inescapable, while on the other,…
Causality has been often confused with the notion of determinism. It is mandatory to separate the two notions in view of the debate about quantum foundations. Quantum theory provides an example of causal not-deterministic theory. Here we…
Causality is one of the most fundamental -- and yet elusive -- concepts in physics. From its intuitive role in everyday experience to its formal and often implicit role in scientific theories, causality has challenged philosophers and…
Quantum theory is a mathematical formalism to compute probabilities for outcomes happenning in physical experiments. These outcomes constitute events happening in space-time. One of these events represents the fact that a system located in…
We begin with a brief summary of issues encountered involving causality in quantum theory, placing careful emphasis on the assumptions involved in results such as the EPR paradox and Bell's inequality. We critique some solutions to the…
Quantum theory in a global space-time gives rise to non-local correlations, which cannot be explained causally in a satisfactory way; this motivates the study of theories with reduced global assumptions. Oreshkov, Costa, and Brukner (2012)…
It is argued that there is no evidence for causality as a metaphysical relation in quantum phenomena. The assumption that there are no causal laws, but only probabilities for physical processes constrained by symmetries, leads naturally to…
Quantum causality extends the conventional notion of fixed causal structure by allowing channels and operations to act in an indefinite causal order. The importance of such an indefinite causal order ranges from the foundational---e.g.…
It is currently unknown whether the laws of physics permit time travel into the past. While general relativity indicates the theoretical possibility of causality violation, it is now widely accepted that a theory of quantum gravity must…
Causal reasoning is essential to science, yet quantum theory challenges it. Quantum correlations violating Bell inequalities defy satisfactory causal explanations within the framework of classical causal models. What is more, a theory…
In general relativity, `causal structure' refers to the partial order on space-time points (or regions) that encodes time-like relationships. Recently, quantum information and quantum foundations saw the emergence of a `causality…
Causality is a non-obvious concept that is often considered to be related to temporality. In this paper we present a number of past and present approaches to the definition of temporality and causality from philosophical, physical, and…
A tradition handed down among physicists maintains that classical physics is a perfectly deterministic theory capable of predicting the future with absolute certainty, independently of any interpretations. It also tells that it was quantum…
It is often claimed that one cannot locate a notion of causation in fundamental physical theories. The reason most commonly given is that the dynamics of those theories do not support any distinction between the past and the future, and…
Bell's theorem shows that the reasonable relativistic causal principle known as "local causality" is not compatible with the predictions of quantum mechanics. It is not possible maintain a satisfying causal principle of this type while…
Causality is one of the most fundamental notions in physics. Generalized probabilistic theories (GPTs) and the process matrix framework incorporate it in different forms. However, a direct connection between these frameworks remains…