Consider two spacelike-separated measurement regions and , with locally chosen settings and recorded outcomes . A relevant past region supplies a sufficient specification of the common preparation and other hidden physical information needed to screen the outcomes. This is not necessarily just a quantum state written at the source, nor a conditioning on arbitrary records which already contain the future choices. The spacetime shielding and sufficiency requirements are substantive causal assumptions.
Use Bell local causality: once the relevant past is sufficiently specified, learning facts in the remote measurement region changes no local outcome probability. In particular, require
where conditional probabilities are defined. The probability chain rule gives
This factorization combines parameter independence with outcome independence. Neither probability is required to be zero or one: the argument includes stochastic local hidden-variable theories.
Also assume measurement independence, , so all four setting pairs average over one normalized nonnegative past-variable distribution. This is a statistical condition on the setting procedure and relevant hidden information, not a proof of a metaphysical doctrine of free will. Finally the recorded outcomes must represent the same ensemble of trials. One can include nondetections in a specified bounded-outcome rule; if instead one discards events depending on setting or outcome, a further sampling assumption is required. Setting-dependent postselection is not covered silently by the argument.
Let and . They lie in , and the factorization gives
For each ,
Averaging with the same proves the CHSH inequality
No separate assumption of simultaneous predetermined values for incompatible quantum observables was needed. The common probability model and its screening relations did the work.
A Reichenbach common cause principle can motivate the same calculation: a complete classical common cause in the past screens the two outcomes, while each setting affects only its own wing. Together with setting-independent sampling this gives the displayed factorization. It is not enough to provide a different screening variable for each pair of settings: those constructions need not form one compatible common-cause model for the four correlations.
A stochastic Einstein locality formulation instead constrains objective chances by facts in the appropriate causal past. To use it as a sufficient premise here, specify both local dependence on settings and a joint screening condition for the two outcomes. Merely requiring local marginal chances not to depend on a remote setting gives parameter independence, which is weaker than factorization. Thus the precise stochastic locality version matters; one should not infer a Bell inequality from every condition loosely described as no superluminal influence.