Quantum nonlocality and Bell's inequalities

A number of additional assumptions is discussed playing a role in derivations of the Bell inequalities along with the locality condition. An analogy between quantum mechanics and statistical thermodynamics is exploited to demonstrate that the existence of conditional probabilities p(a(i)/lambda), generally assumed in stochastic hidden variables theories may be questionable within the domain of application of quantum mechanics.)It is demonstrated how this could block derivations of the Bell inequalities and of the Kochen-Specker theorem. The analogy also provides a possible understanding of the nonlocality of quantum mechanics as evidenced by the Borchers-Schlieder theorem.