On contextuality and logic in scientific discourse: Reply to Aliakbarzadeh, Kitto, and Bruza

Abstract

Aliakbarzadeh, Kitto, and Bruza (arXiv:1909.13048v1) criticize the Contextuality-by-Default (CbD) theory in three ways: (1) they claim an internal contradiction within the theory, that consists in both denying and accepting the equality of stochastically unrelated random variables; (2) they find CbD deficient because when one confines one's attention to consistently connected systems (those with no disturbance/signaling) one can dispense with the double-indexation of random variables; and (3) they see no relationship between double-indexation and ontic states. This commentary shows that (re$\:$1) the contradiction is inserted in the presentation of CbD by the authors of the paper; (re$\:$2) in the case of consistently connected systems CbD properly specializes to traditional understanding of contextuality; and (re$\:$3) if ontic states are understood as quantum states, they are simply not within the language of CbD, and if they are understood as domain probability spaces for context-sharing random variables, they can be trivially reconstructed.