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Authors requiring further informationregarding Elsevier’s archiving and manuscript policies areencouraged to visit:http://www.elsevier.com/copyrightAuthor's personal copyWhy quantum mechanics favors adynamical andacausal interpretations such as relational blockworldover backwardly causal and time-symmetric rivalsMichael Silbersteina,b,, Michael Cifoneb, William Mark StuckeycaDepartment of Philosophy, Wenger Center, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA 17022, USAbDepartment of Philosophy, Skinner Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USAcDepartment of Physics, Esbenshade Building, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA 17022, USAarticle infoArticle history:Received 19 July 2008Received in revised form19 July 2008Keywords:Time-symmetric quantum mechanicsBlockworldLocalityBackwards causationRelational BlockworldHidden variableabstractWe articulate the problems pose d by the quantum liarexperiment (QLE) for backwards causation interpretations ofquantum mechanics, time-symmetric accounts and otherdynamically oriented local hidden variable theories. We showthat such accounts cannot save locality in the case of QLEmerely by giving up ‘‘lambda-independence.’’ In contrast, weshow that QLE poses no problems for our acausal RelationalBlockworld interpretation of quantum mechanics, whichinvokes instead adynamical global constraints to explainEinstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) correlations and QLE. We makethe case that the acausal and adynamical perspective is morefundamental and that dynamical entities obeying dynamicallaws are emergent features grounded therein.& 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.When citing this paper, please use the full journal title Studies in History and Philosophy ofModern PhysicsARTICLE IN PRESSContents lists available at ScienceDirectjournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/shpsbStudies in History and Philosophyof Modern Physics1355-2198/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.doi:10.1016/j.shpsb.2008.07.005Corresponding author at: Department of Philosophy, Wenger Center, Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, PA 17022,USA.E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Silberstein).Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 39 (2008) 736–751Author's personal copy0. IntroductionWe believe that (especially if one is interested in saving locality and thereby securing consistencywith special relativity (SR)) certain quantum mechanical experiments like the quantum liarexperiment (QLE) imply that quantum mechanics (QM) is deeply contextual in a way that calls intoserious question any common-cause principle and any account of QM that relies on ‘‘interactiveforks’’ to explain, for example, Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen (EPR) correlations (Einstein, Podolsky, &Rosen, 1935). Our Relational Blockworld interpretation (RBW) has the explanatory capability tohandle the contextuality (what we shall call ‘‘spatiotemporal contextuality’’) revealed in QLE whilealso preserving locality. RBW is an adynamical account of non-relativistic quantum mechanics(NRQM) that invokes acausal and adynamical global constraints and is therefore not in essentialconflict with SR. Unlike Huw Price’s backwards causation QM (BCQM) account (Price, 1996) forexample, we reject any kind of common-cause principle. Like BCQM and time-symmetric QM(TSQM)1and various local hidden variable theories,2RBW is consistent with the denial of the‘‘lambda-independence’’ assumption (that the past states of the hidden variables do not depend ontheir future states) in Bell’s Theorem, but RBW does not rely on that fact to preserve locality.Indeed, what will be made clear is that denying the lambda-independence assumption is notsufficient to preserve locality and furthermore that the other accounts all fail as completeinterpretations, whether on more general grounds such as the measurement problem or in their lackof ability to explain QLE with locality intact. Section 1 will introduce the reader to RBW, Section 2 willshow why no extant account of BCQM, TSQM or local hidden variable theories more generally canclearly explain QLE while maintaining locality and Section 3 will summarize the RBW acausal globalconstraint account of QLE.1. RBW: radically Archimedean physics1.1. Blockhead dreamsOthers have suggested that we ought to take the fact of blockworld (BW) seriously when doingphysics and modeling reality. For example, Huw Price (1996, p. 4) calls it the ‘‘Archimedean viewfrom nowhen’’ and it has motivated him to take seriously the idea of a TSQM and so-calledbackwards causation in QM. As he says in his book defending BCQM: ‘‘the aim of the book is toexplore the consequences of the block universe view in physics and philosophy’’ (Price, 1996, p. 15).Price is attempting to construct a local hidden variables interpretation of NRQM that explains EPRcorrelations with purely time-like dynamics or backwards causation. According to Price, BCQMprovides an explanation of the Bell correlations ‘‘which shows that they are not really non-local at all,in that they depend on purely local interactions between particles and measuring devices concerned.They seem non-local only if we overlook the present relevance of future interactions’’(Price, 1996,p. 224). The key explanatory move that Price makes is to have information travel backwards alongthe light cones of the two EPR particles, converging at the source of the entangled state. Presumably,this is the point in spacetime where the entangled state is ‘‘prepared.’’ The picture we must think ofis this: the future measurement interaction in separate wings of an EPR apparatus is the cause of the(earlier) entangled state, so the point at which they are created is the ‘‘effect’’ of a causal chain‘‘originating’’ with the measurement interaction. That is, the effect of the causal chain originatingwith the