Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

There are two different and logically independent concepts of noncontextuality in quantum mechanics: simultaneous and measurement noncontextuality. An ontological model for quantum mechanics is simultaneous noncontextual if every ontic state determines the probability of the outcomes of every measurement independently of what other measurements are simultaneously performed. An ontological model is measurement noncontextual if any two measurements which have the same probability distribution of outcomes in every quantum state also have the same probability distribution of outcomes in every ontic state. In the paper I will argue that Kochen-Specker arguments do not provide a state-independent proof ruling out simultaneous noncontextual ontological models for quantum mechanics.