Abstract

In this paper, I want to present a family of results that may seem to add up to a new proof of the impossibility of hidden variables. In fact, I very much doubt that that’s really what really emerges, but I think the results are nonetheless interesting because they help to sharpen the discussion of Jon Jarrett’s very useful decompostion theorem, in particular, of the condition he calls locality. Jarrett (1984) and Ballentine and Jarrett (1987) have suggested that the so-called condition of locality is the one that provides the conceptual link between hidden variable theories and relativity: if locality is violated, so is relativity. On the other hand, a theory may violate the condition Jarrett calls completeness without running afoul of relativity. Now I agree with Jarrett and Ballentine about completeness, but I strongly suspect that we have quite a way to go before we really understand what would be involved in a violation of locality.