Assessing the status of the common cause principle

Miklós Rédei

pp. 433-442

in: Dennis Dieks, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel, Marcel Weber, Maria C. Galavotti (eds), New directions in the philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

The Common Cause Principle, stating that correlations are either consequences of a direct causal link between the correlated events or are due to a common cause, is assessed from the perspective of its viability and it is argued that at present we do not have strictly empirical evidence that could be interpreted as disconfirming the principle. In particular it is not known whether spacelike correlations predicted by quantum field theory can be explained by properly localized common causes, and EPR correlations are known to be unexplainable only by common causes that are required to satisfy conditions that are empirically not tested.