The EPR-Bell Experiments: The Role of Counterfactuality and Probability in the Context of Actually Conducted Experiments

Abstract

Some aspects of the concepts of counterfactuality and probability are explored as they apply to the specific example of the famous “EPR-Bell” experiments realized by physicists over the last half-century. In particular the question is raised: what hypotheses about actually conducted experiments do the results exclude? It is argued that the answer depends on both whether these hypotheses are deterministic or stochastic, and on the “cardinality” of the experiment relative to the theory.

Keywords

• counterfactuality
• probability
• EPR-Bell
• nonlocality