All-Possible-Couplings Approach to Measuring Probabilistic Context
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Abstract
From behavioral sciences to quantum mechanics, one encounters situations where a system outputs several random variables in response to several inputs, for each of these responses only some of the inputs may directly influence it, but other inputs provide a context for this response by influencing its probabilistic relations to other responses. These contextual influences are very different, say, in the classical kinetic theory and in the entanglement paradigm of quantum mechanics, traditionally being interpreted as representing different forms of physical determinism. We propose a general approach to quantifying and classifying all logically possible contextual influences, based on probabilistic coupling: studying sets of joint distributions imposed on random outputs recorded at different (mutually incompatible) values of inputs.Keywords
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