On November 25, 2025, Gábor Hofer-Szabó will give a talk "Noncommuting Common Causes Revisited" at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information in Vienna.

Physics meets Philosophy in Vienna is a series of seminars that take place on a monthly basis at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information and at the University of Vienna. The topics of the seminars are predominantly focused on the philosophy of physics and general philosophy of science.

Gábor Hofer-Szabó's abstract:

Noncommuting Common Causes Revisited
In this talk, I will revisit the concept of noncommuting common causes; refute two objections raised against them, the triviality objection and the lack of causal explanatory force; and explore how their existence modifies the EPR argument. More specifically, we show that 1) product states screening off all quantum correlations do not compromise noncommuting common causal explanations; 2) noncommuting common causes can satisfy the law of total probability; 3) perfect correlations can have indeterministic noncommuting common causes; and, as a combination of the above claims, 4) perfect correlations can have noncommuting common causes which are both nontrivial and satisfy the law of total probability.