Context
The record held five works on contextuality, all read in full. It had no word
to find them by. “Contextuality” appeared only as one item in the blurb of
quantum-foundations, so a reader browsing that topic met contextuality mixed
in with interference, toy theories and quantum thermodynamics.
The five works also formed two threads that nothing connected:
- Kochen–Specker contextuality in sheaf form: Abramsky & Brandenburger.
- Spekkens’s generalized contextuality: Schmid et al.’s structure theorem, Spekkens’s epistemically restricted theories, and Catani et al. on interference.
A sixth work, Grangier & Auffèves, uses the word for something else.
On 2026-09-27 the owner asked for the tag and for the threads to be brought together.
Decision
Add contextuality to topics, with a label and a blurb. It stands outside
the philosophy group, beside quantum-foundations.
Its blurb covers three things:
- both formal notions;
- noncontextual models and their limits;
- contextuality outside physics, since the Contextuality-by-Default programme applies the notion to behavioural and linguistic data.
| work | tags now |
|---|---|
| Abramsky & Brandenburger | contextuality first |
| Schmid et al. | contextuality first |
| Spekkens (2014), Catani et al. | contextuality second, after quantum-foundations |
| Grangier & Auffèves | contextuality second: the work is about context-dependence, even though it does not establish contextuality in either formal sense (see the THEORY placing it) |
Considered and not tagged, each with its reason in the curation entry of this date:
- works that use “contextual” in an unrelated sense (contextual analysis, contextualism, contextual embeddings);
- the generalized-probabilistic-theory introductions;
- van Rijsbergen’s The Geometry of Information Retrieval, whose seed gives no evidence that it treats contextuality.
quantum-foundations keeps “contextuality” in its blurb. A quantum-foundations
work about contextuality should carry both words.
Alternatives
- Leave it inside
quantum-foundations. That is what failed. The topic cannot be browsed, and its outside-physics leg has nowhere to go. - Two words, one per formal notion. That would split works that bear on both, such as the Spekkens (2005) bridge and the review. Relating the two notions is exactly what the THEORY documents are for.