The principle of ‘information causality’ can be used to derive an upper bound—known as the ‘Tsirelson bound’—on the strength of quantum mechanical correlations, and has been conjectured to be a foundational principle of nature. To date, however, it has not been sufficiently motivated to play such a foundational role. The motivations that have so far been given are, as I argue, either unsatisfactorily vague or appeal to little if anything more than intuition. Thus in this paper I consider whether some way might be found to successfully motivate the principle. And I propose that a compelling way of so doing is to understand it as a generalisation of Einstein's principle of the mutually independent existence—the ‘being-thus’—of spatially distant things. In particular I first describe an argument, due to Demopoulos, to the effect that the so-called ‘no-signalling’ condition can be viewed as a generalisation of Einstein's principle that is appropriate for an irreducibly statistical theory such as quantum mechanics. I then argue that a compelling way to motivate information causality is to in turn consider it as a further generalisation of the Einsteinian principle that is appropriate for a theory of communication. I describe, however, some important conceptual obstacles that must yet be overcome if the project of establishing information causality as a foundational principle of nature is to succeed.

“信息因果关系”的原理可用于推导量子力学相关强度的上限（称为“ Tsirelson界”），并且被认为是自然界的基本原理。然而，迄今为止，它还没有足够的动力去发挥这种基础性作用。我认为，到目前为止给出的动机要么是令人满意的含糊不清，要么是除了直觉之外几乎没有什么吸引力。因此，在本文中，我考虑是否可以找到某种方法来成功地激发该原理。我建议这样做的一种令人信服的方式是将其理解为爱因斯坦关于空间上相互独立的事物的相互独立存在原理（即“存在”）的概括。首先，我首先描述一个由于Demopoulos而引起的争论，其结果是，所谓的“无信号”条件可以看作是爱因斯坦原理的推广，适用于不可推论的统计理论，例如量子力学。然后，我认为激励信息因果关系的一种令人信服的方法是反过来将其视为爱因斯坦原理的进一步概括，该原理适用于传播理论。但是，我描述了如果要成功建立将信息因果关系作为自然的基本原理的项目，则必须克服一些重要的概念障碍。然后，我认为激励信息因果关系的一种令人信服的方法是反过来将其视为爱因斯坦原理的进一步概括，该原理适用于传播理论。但是，我描述了如果要成功建立将信息因果关系作为自然的基本原理的项目，则必须克服一些重要的概念障碍。然后，我认为激励信息因果关系的一种令人信服的方法是反过来将其视为爱因斯坦原理的进一步概括，该原理适用于传播理论。但是，我描述了如果要成功建立将信息因果关系作为自然的基本原理的项目，则必须克服一些重要的概念障碍。