Of the three faculties of subjectivity, the empirical case for quantum cognition is the strongest. In the past decade a rapidly growing body of scholarship has emerged at the intersection of mathematical psychology and physics that not only models cognition in explicitly quantum terms, but has rigorously tested these models as well. While it remains to be seen how mainstream psychologists will respond, “quantum decision theory” has clearly come of age. Moreover, at the same time an almost completely independent literature has emerged on quantum game theory as well. This work is more in a purely formal vein and thus less well tested against real data, although its predictions about how people should behave in quantum games appear to conform to what experimental game theorists have found. I briefly take up quantum game theory at the end of this chapter, but my main focus will be on its decision-theoretic cousin. Quantum consciousness theory suggests that human beings are literally walking wave functions. Most quantum decision theorists would not go that far, and indeed – perhaps wary of controversy – they generally barely mention quantum consciousness, and then only to emphasize that they are making no claims about what is going on deep inside the brain (much less about consciousness), but are only interested in behavior. Instead, they have motivated their work in two other ways. First, they have highlighted the intuitive fit between quantum theory's indeterminism and the probabilistic character of human behavior. If we were founding the social sciences today and started – without metaphysical prejudice – by looking for useful models in physics, then quantum models would be a much more obvious import than classical ones. Second, quantum decision theorists have argued that their model can explain long-standing anomalies in human behavior under uncertainty. Beyond that they have remained agnostic about quantum consciousness, which makes quantum decision theory a form of what is called “weak” or “generalized” quantum theory, in which the formalism is detached from its physical basis and used simply as a tool to describe phenomena.
Of the three faculties of subjectivity, the empirical case for quantum cognition is the strongest. In the past decade a rapidly growing body of scholarship has emerged at the intersection of mathematical psychology and physics that not only models cognition in explicitly quantum terms, but has rigorously tested these models as well. While it remains to be seen how mainstream psychologists will respond, “quantum decision theory” has clearly come of age. Moreover, at the same time an almost completely independent literature has emerged on quantum game theory as well. This work is more in a purely formal vein and thus less well tested against real data, although its predictions about how people should behave in quantum games appear to conform to what experimental game theorists have found. I briefly take up quantum game theory at the end of this chapter, but my main focus will be on its decision-theoretic cousin. Quantum consciousness theory suggests that human beings are literally walking wave functions. Most quantum decision theorists would not go that far, and indeed – perhaps wary of controversy – they generally barely mention quantum consciousness, and then only to emphasize that they are making no claims about what is going on deep inside the brain (much less about consciousness), but are only interested in behavior. Instead, they have motivated their work in two other ways. First, they have highlighted the intuitive fit between quantum theory's indeterminism and the probabilistic character of human behavior. If we were founding the social sciences today and started – without metaphysical prejudice – by looking for useful models in physics, then quantum models would be a much more obvious import than classical ones. Second, quantum decision theorists have argued that their model can explain long-standing anomalies in human behavior under uncertainty. Beyond that they have remained agnostic about quantum consciousness, which makes quantum decision theory a form of what is called “weak” or “generalized” quantum theory, in which the formalism is detached from its physical basis and used simply as a tool to describe phenomena.
This article considers a partly philosophical question: What are the ontological and epistemological reasons for using quantum-like models or theories (models and theories based on the mathematical formalism of quantum theory) vs. classical-like ones (based on the mathematics of classical physics), in considering human thinking and decision making? This question is only partly philosophical because it also concerns the scientific understanding of the phenomena considered by the theories that use mathematical models of either type, just as in physics itself, where this question also arises as a physical question. This is because this question is in effect: What are the physical reasons for using, even if not requiring, these types of theories in considering quantum phenomena, which these theories predict fully in accord with the experiment? This is clearly also a physical, rather than only philosophical, question and so is, accordingly, the question of whether one needs classical-like or quantum-like theories or both (just as in physics we use both classical and quantum theories) in considering human thinking in psychology and related fields, such as decision science. It comes as no surprise that many of these reasons are parallel to those that are responsible for the use of QM and QFT in the case of quantum phenomena. Still, the corresponding situations should be understood and justified in terms of the phenomena considered, phenomena defined by human thinking, because there are important differences between these phenomena and quantum phenomena, which this article aims to address. In order to do so, this article will first consider quantum phenomena and quantum theory, before turning to human thinking and decision making, in addressing which it will also discuss two recent quantum-like approaches to human thinking, that by M. G. D'Ariano and F. Faggin and that by A. Khrennikov. Both approaches are ontological in the sense of offering representations, different in character in each approach, of human thinking by the formalism of quantum theory. Whether such a representation, as opposed to only predicting the outcomes of relevant experiments, is possible either in quantum theory or in quantum-like theories of human thinking is one of the questions addressed in this article. The philosophical position adopted in it is that it may not be possible to make this assumption, which, however, is not the same as saying that it is impossible. I designate this view as the reality-without-realism, RWR, view and in considering strictly mental processes as the ideality-without-idealism, IWI, view, in the second case in part following, but also moving beyond, I. Kant's philosophy.
The article presents a review of foreign scientific literature on the quantum-like approach to understanding the modeling of cognition and decision-making processes. It is shown that the current application of quantum physics approaches to consciousness, psychological approaches such as perception, cognition, emotions, consciousness and learning, involves the search for a single objective mathematical model of what underlies the experience of the brain. The use of quantum physics algorithms can help in understanding the mechanisms of brain malfunctions and memory impairments that are found in pathologies such as dementia caused by Alzheimer's disease, schizophrenia, etc. Quantum physics approaches are applicable to issues of modeling cognition and decision-making processes, as well as in cognitive research, information processing by the human brain, artificial intelligence development, psychology, social and political sciences. Application of the abstract mathematical principles of quantum theory can help in understanding human consciousness and behavior. Quantum probability theory is applied to modeling human behavior due to the prevalence of uncertainty in human interaction with the world. Quantum cognitive models are especially useful in research in such areas as errors in decision making, order effects of questions, conceptual combinations, accumulation of evidence, perception, etc. Of particular interest to researchers are issues of quantum-like modeling of cognition and decision-making processes, the apparatus of quantum information and probability theory, useful for such modeling, as well as the use of such apparatus in cognitive research, the development of artificial intelligence, psychology, social and political sciences.
Recent results from cognitive psychology suggest that human behavior can be, in some situations, better described by laws known from physical quantum theory. This work responds to this development and seeks to answer the question of how quantum models of cognition and decision-making can contribute to our understanding of the social world. We introduce the approaches to the application of quantum theory in social sciences - quantum consciousness, quantum reasoning and quantum metaphor and further develop the second, in the context of strategic interaction in game theory. We show that the quantum model corresponds to both the psychological intuition and many empirically known anomalies such as the order effect, disjunction effect, or context effect. In this work, we derive a specific model of strategic interaction between two players, and we test it in the experimental Prisoner's Dilemma game. The model is based on the rational choice theory, which is nevertheless re-defined when it is shown how the strategic choice is changed if the quantum probability (C*-algebra) is used as the underlying theory instead of classical probability (σ-algebra). The results obtained support the quantum model and showed a different representation of the game among various groups of players. The quantum model of...
Quantum decision theory is a theory of choice behavior, and as such deals not just with Cognition but also with what I have separated out as Will. However, its advocates have concentrated on demonstrating that quantum preferences and beliefs, conceived as a kind of input, can predict observed behavioral outputs. As a result, they have not thematized what is going on in-between, the mechanism (sic) by which the quantum mind makes choices in the first place. In this way the theory, like its classical forerunner, selects a “basis vector” for thinking about people that is more on the terrain of Cognition than of Will. That makes sense as a first step, given that if the theory can't predict behavior then the rest is moot, but to get a more rounded quantum person we need to “rotate” to the basis of Will. Will is the essence of agency, a power to animate and move the body – and the mind, in the form of attention – from the essentially passive stance of Cognition to active, purposeful engagement with the world. In Chapter 6, I equated this power with an aspect of wave function collapse, viewed as a process of temporal symmetry-breaking, in which advanced action moves through Will and retarded action through Experience. (Note that this means Will is not straightforwardly conscious, to which I return below.) If that is right, then Will and Experience are complementary in the quantum sense – incompatible, yet jointly necessary for a complete description of the collapse process – and so it will only be after reading the next chapter that the meaning of this one will be fully realized. If Will is an aspect of wave function collapse – one of the most incomprehensible features of quantum mechanics – then that may help explain why, compared to Cognition and even Experience, its standing among philosophers seems more tentative.
Quantum theory has inspired many new ideas for understanding Cognition and decision making. Given the nascent state of this field, many new challenges still remain. What are the strengths and unique contributions of these ideas? What are likely next steps in its development? How can it be applied to practical problems in cognitive science? Is this a rational or an irrational system of reasoning? What, if any, are its connections to neuroscience? Should the hard problem of consciousness be considered? These are questions that we try to address in this chapter, albeit at times in a limited way. We end with a debate with a fictitious skeptic (actually previous reviewers) of these ideas. Let us start by reviewing what we have covered so far. Contributions to cognition and decision We begin by summarizing the conclusions reached in previous chapters regarding the usefulness of quantum theory for modelling phenomena in cognition and decision. Chapter 1 provided some motivation and Chapter 2 provided a theoretical introduction to quantum theory. Chapter 3 presented a quantum model to account for question order effects on survey research. An exact and parameter-free test was derived from the model, which produced surprisingly accurate predictions for results obtained from three different large Gallup poll survey studies. Chapter 4 described a quantum model of probability judgments to account for findings that produce violations of classic probability theory, including conjunction and disjunction fallacies and order effects on inference.
Is mind quantum-like? Is consciousness quantum physical? Does consciousness have a role to play in the emergence of the classical world from the underlying quantum universe? Or is this dichotomy between classical and quantum an illusion? How can world philosophies enrich our views on these matters and interact with the best scientific theories? These are some questions that motivated us to conceive the current book. We also felt an urgent need to discuss the central philosophical questions haunting the emerging frameworks of quantum cognition and quantum-like framework (QLF). We have observed that there are very good technical or mathematical works being done in the emerging fields of quantum cognition and QLF, but there is still a great need for exploring the underlying and open philosophical questions they demand. Quantum cognition developed as a frontier research programme in understanding various cognitive phenomena that are hard or impossible to describe based on classical cognitive science paradigm. Classical cognitive science draws philosophically and mathematically from classical physics and classical probability theory. For example, cognitive realism thinking is deeply motivated by the scientific realism of classical physics. However, as we explore, there are numerous empirical findings which demonstrate clearly that human mind and cognitive processes exhibit features that are more quantum-like. Central to these features are indeterminacy, context dependence, and complementarity of cognitive phenomena, for example, perception, information retrieval, and even qualia. Many good works in the previous decade have demonstrated the efficacy of quantum-like mathematical modelling in such cases. However, given that efficacy, we cannot simply conclude that mind is quantum. Rather there are features that go beyond what is allowed in standard quantum formalism.