This article aims to contribute to the ongoing task of clarifying the relationships between reality, probability, and nonlocality in quantum physics. It is in part stimulated by Khrennikov’s argument, in several communications, for “eliminating the issue of quantum nonlocality” from the analysis of quantum entanglement. I argue, however, that the question may not be that of eliminating but instead that of further illuminating this issue, a task that can be pursued by relating quantum nonlocality to other key features of quantum (...) phenomena. I suggest that the following features of quantum phenomena and quantum mechanics, distinguishing them from classical phenomena and classical physics— the irreducible role of measuring instruments in defining quantum phenomena, discreteness, complementarity, entanglement, quantum nonlocality, and the irreducibly probabilistic nature of quantum predictions—are all interconnected, so that it is difficult to give an unconditional priority to any one of them. To argue this case, I shall consider quantum phenomena and quantum mechanics from a nonrealist or, in terms adopted here, “reality-without-realism” perspective. This perspective extends Bohr’s view, grounded in his analysis of the irreducible role of measuring instruments in the constitution of quantum phenomena. (shrink)

First, this article considers the nature of quantum reality and the concept of realism in quantum theory, in conjunction with the roles of locality, causality, and probability and statistics there. Second, it offers two interpretations of quantum mechanics, developed by the authors of this article, the second of which is also a different theory of quantum phenomena. Both of these interpretations are statistical. The first interpretation, by A. Plotnitsky, “the statistical Copenhagen interpretation,” is nonrealist, insofar as the description or even (...) conception of the nature of quantum objects and processes is precluded. The second, by A. Khrennikov, is ultimately realist, because it assumes that the quantum-mechanical level of reality is underlain by a deeper level of reality, described, in a realist fashion, by a model, based in the pre-quantum classical statistical field theory, the predictions of which reproduce those of quantum mechanics. Moreover, because the continuous fields considered in this model are transformed into discrete clicks of detectors, experimental outcomes in this model depend on the context of measurement in accordance with N. Bohr’s interpretation and the statistical Copenhagen interpretation, which coincides with N. Bohr’s interpretation in this regard. (shrink)