  Recent discussions by Mermin [1] and Stapp [2] in this journal on
non-locality and counterfactuality are shown to contain linguistic problems
that require verification. As such they can at most provide us with two
subjective choices for the meaning of 'counterfactual statements' in quantum
mechanics. We shall show that the word 'counterfactual' is in fact
inappropriate here and should be replaced by the word 'hypothetical'. Mermin's
choice imposes a strictly contextual meaning based upon an interpretation of
counterfactuality which he used to refute, without proof as we shall see,
Stapp's logical proof [3] of non-locality in quantum theory. In linguistic
theory both authors' choices of meaning: counterfactual versus hypothetical are
equally acceptable and therefore some of the issues they discussed lie outside
the domain of physics. The issues they discussed are further confused by the
fact that in his reply Stapp [2] seems to have adopted Mermin's counterfactual
interpretation against his own original [3] hypothetical interpretation. In the
rest of this paper we shall adopt the hypothetical sense of Stapp's original
statements but we modify his crucial statement LOC2 appropriately, then
following his argumentations, we shall show that there is no conflict between
relativity and quantum mechanics. We suggest that this should be the natural
(pragmatic) choice of meaning in defining the predictions of events in the
Hardy experiment.
