Classical Explanations in (and of) General Probabilistic Theories
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Quantum Physics arXiv:2603.05627 (quant-ph) [Submitted on 5 Mar 2026] Title:Classical Explanations in (and of) General Probabilistic Theories Authors:John Harding, Alex Wilce View a PDF of the paper titled Classical Explanations in (and of) General Probabilistic Theories, by John Harding and Alex Wilce View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:We introduce a notion of the ``explanation" of one (generalized) probabilistic model by another as particular kind of span in the category $\Prob$ of probabilistic models and morphisms. We show that explanations compose under a standard pullback construction (notwithstanding that $\Prob$ does not support arbitrary pullbacks). We then show that every locally-finite probabilistic model has a canonical, sharp classical explanation. The construction is functorial, so every locally-finite probabilistic theory has a canonical, sharp classical (though of course, usually non-local) representation. Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph); Logic in Computer Science (cs.LO) Cite as: arXiv:2603.05627 [quant-ph] (or arXiv:2603.05627v1 [quant-ph] for this version) https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2603.05627 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite Submission history From: Alexander Wilce [view email] [v1] Thu, 5 Mar 2026 19:35:41 UTC (25 KB) Full-text links: Access Paper: View a PDF of the paper titled Classical Explanations in (and of) General Probabilistic Theories, by John Harding and Alex WilceView PDFHTML (experimental)TeX Source view license Current browse context: quant-ph new | recent | 2026-03 Change to browse by: cs cs.LO References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADSGoogle Scholar Semantic Scholar export BibTeX citation Loading... BibTeX formatted citation × loading... Data provided by: Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Code, Data and Media Associated with this Article alphaXiv Toggle alphaXiv (What is alphaXiv?) Links to Code Toggle CatalyzeX Code Finder for Papers (What is CatalyzeX?) DagsHub Toggle DagsHub (What is DagsHub?) GotitPub Toggle Gotit.pub (What is GotitPub?) Huggingface Toggle Hugging Face (What is Huggingface?) Links to Code Toggle Papers with Code (What is Papers with Code?) ScienceCast Toggle ScienceCast (What is ScienceCast?) Demos Demos Replicate Toggle Replicate (What is Replicate?) Spaces Toggle Hugging Face Spaces (What is Spaces?) Spaces Toggle TXYZ.AI (What is TXYZ.AI?) Related Papers Recommenders and Search Tools Link to Influence Flower Influence Flower (What are Influence Flowers?) Core recommender toggle CORE Recommender (What is CORE?) Author Venue Institution Topic About arXivLabs arXivLabs: experimental projects with community collaborators arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs. Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)