This chapter outlines some of the highlights of efforts undertaken by our group to describe the role of contextuality in the conceptualization of conscious experience using generalized formalisms from quantum mechanics.
In this paper we present a neural oscillator model of stimulus response theory that exhibits quantum-like behavior. We then show that without adding any additional assumptions, a quantum model constructed to fit observable pairwise correlations has no predictive power over the unknown triple moment, obtainable through the activation of multiple oscillators. We compare this with the results obtained in de Barros (2013), where a criteria of rationality gives optimal ranges for the triple moment.
Recently the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics, especially methods of quantum probability theory, started to be widely used in a variety of applications outside of physics, e.g., cognition and psychology as well as economy and finances. To distinguish such models from genuine quantum physical models, they often called quantum-like (although often people simply speak about, e.g., "quantum cognition"). These novel applications generate a number of foundational questions. Nowadays we can speak about a new science - foundations of quantum-like modeling. At the first stage this science wa…
Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学);Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base(基础自主研究实验室);School of Management and Institute IQSCS(管理学院与IQSCS研究所)
The scientific community is becoming more and more interested in the research that applies the mathematical formalism of quantum theory to model human decision-making. In this paper, we provide the theoretical foundations of the quantum approach to cognition that we developed in Brussels. These foundations rest on the results of two decade studies on the axiomatic and operational-realistic approaches to the foundations of quantum physics. The deep analogies between the foundations of physics and cognition lead us to investigate the validity of quantum theory as a general and unitary framework …
In this paper we discuss quantum-like decision-making experiments using negative probabilities. We do so by showing how the two-slit experiment, in the simplified version of the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, can be described by this formalism. We show that negative probabilities impose constraints to what types of counter-factual reasoning we can make with respect to (quantum) internal representations of the decision maker.
One of us has recently elaborated a theory for modelling concepts that uses the state context property (SCoP) formalism, i.e. a generalization of the quantum formalism. This formalism incorporates context into the mathematical structure used to represent a concept, and thereby models how context influences the typicality of a single exemplar and the applicability of a single property of a concept, which provides a solution of the 'Pet-Fish problem' and other difficulties occurring in concept theory. Then, a quantum model has been worked out which reproduces the membership weights of several ex…
Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学利奥·阿波斯泰尔跨学科研究中心);Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base(基础自主研究实验室);University of Leicester(莱斯特大学)
The formalism of quantum theory in Hilbert space has been applied with success to the modeling and explanation of several cognitive phenomena, whereas traditional cognitive approaches were problematical. However, this 'quantum cognition paradigm' was recently challenged by its proven impossibility to simultaneously model 'question order effects' and 'response replicability'. In Part I of this paper we describe sequential dichotomic measurements within an operational and realistic framework for human cognition elaborated by ourselves, and represent them in a quantum-like 'extended Bloch represe…
The formalism of abstracted quantum mechanics is applied in a model of the generalized Liar Paradox. Here, the Liar Paradox, a consistently testable configuration of logical truth properties, is considered a dynamic conceptual entity in the cognitive sphere. Basically, the intrinsic contextuality of the truth-value of the Liar Paradox is appropriately covered by the abstracted quantum mechanical approach. The formal details of the model are explicited here for the generalized case. We prove the possibility of constructing a quantum model of the m-sentence generalizations of the Liar Paradox. T…
Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies, Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学利奥·阿波斯泰尔跨学科研究中心);Laboratorio di Autoricerca di Base(基础自主研究实验室);University of Leicester(莱斯特大学)
The research on human cognition has recently benefited from the use of the mathematical formalism of quantum theory in Hilbert space. However, cognitive situations exist which indicate that the Hilbert space structure, and the associated Born rule, would be insufficient to provide a satisfactory modeling of the collected data, so that one needs to go beyond Hilbert space. In Part I of this paper we follow this direction and present a general tension-reduction (GTR) model, in the ambit of an operational and realistic framework for human cognition. In this Part II we apply this non-Hilbertian qu…
Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies(利奥·阿波斯泰尔跨学科研究中心);Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学);University of British Columbia(不列颠哥伦比亚大学);Instituto de Filosofía y Ciencias de la Complejidad (IFICC)(哲学与复杂性研究所(IFICC))
Traditional cognitive science rests on a foundation of classical logic and probability theory. This foundation has been seriously challenged by several findings in experimental psychology on human decision making. Meanwhile, the formalism of quantum theory has provided an efficient resource for modeling these classically problematical situations. In this paper, we start from our successful quantum-theoretic approach to the modeling of concept combinations to formulate a unifying explanatory hypothesis. In it, human reasoning is the superposition of two processes -- a conceptual reasoning, whos…
The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics has been successfully employed in the last years to model situations in which the use of classical structures gives rise to problematical situations, and where typically quantum effects, such as 'contextuality' and 'entanglement', have been recognized. This 'Quantum Interaction Approach' is briefly reviewed in this paper focusing, in particular, on the quantum models that have been elaborated to describe how concepts combine in cognitive science, and on the ensuing identification of a quantum structure in human thought. We point out that these re…
Recently people started to understand that applications of the mathematical formalism of quantum theory are not reduced to physics. Nowadays, this formalism is widely used outside of quantum physics, in particular, in cognition, psychology, decision making, information processing, especially information retrieval. The latter is very promising. The aim of this brief introductory review is to stimulate research in this exciting area of information science. This paper is not aimed to present a complete review on the state of art in quantum information retrieval.
Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学);University of British Columbia(不列颠哥伦比亚大学)
Experiments in cognitive science and decision theory show that the ways in which people combine concepts and make decisions cannot be described by classical logic and probability theory. This has serious implications for applied disciplines such as information retrieval, artificial intelligence and robotics. Inspired by a mathematical formalism that generalizes quantum mechanics the authors have constructed a contextual framework for both concept representation and decision making, together with quantum models that are in strong alignment with experimental data. The results can be interpreted …
We proof a theorem that shows that a collection of experimental data of membership weights of items with respect to a pair of concepts and its conjunction cannot be modeled within a classical measure theoretic weight structure in case the experimental data contain the effect called overextension. Since the effect of overextension, analogue to the well-known guppy effect for concept combinations, is abundant in all experiments testing weights of items with respect to pairs of concepts and their conjunctions, our theorem constitutes a no-go theorem for classical measure structure for common data…
The broader scope of our investigations is the search for the way in which concepts and their combinations carry and influence meaning and what this implies for human thought. More specifically, we examine the use of the mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics as a modeling instrument and propose a general mathematical modeling scheme for the combinations of concepts. We point out that quantum mechanical principles, such as superposition and interference, are at the origin of specific effects in cognition related to concept combinations, such as the guppy effect and the overextension and u…
Center Leo Apostel for Interdisciplinary Studies(里奥·阿波斯托尔跨学科研究中心);Brussels Free University(布鲁塞尔自由大学);University of British Columbia(不列颠哥伦比亚大学)
The mathematical formalism of quantum theory has been successfully used in human cognition to model decision processes and to deliver representations of human knowledge. As such, quantum cognition inspired tools have improved technologies for Natural Language Processing and Information Retrieval. In this paper, we overview the quantum cognition approach developed in our Brussels team during the last two decades, specifically our identification of quantum structures in human concepts and language, and the modeling of data from psychological and corpus-text-based experiments. We discuss our quan…
A general tension-reduction (GTR) model was recently considered to derive quantum probabilities as (universal) averages over all possible forms of non-uniform fluctuations, and explain their considerable success in describing experimental situations also outside of the domain of physics, for instance in the ambit of quantum models of cognition and decision. Yet, this result also highlighted the possibility of observing violations of the predictions of the Born rule, in those situations where the averaging would not be large enough, or would be altered because of the combination of multiple mea…