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Soft Computing

How images combine meaning: quantum entanglement in visual perception

Jonito Aerts Arguëlles, Sandro Sozzo

Published Jan 21, 2020• 11 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract Various empirical tests performed on human participants and also by means of search engines on the Web reveal that, whenever the conceptual combination The Animal Acts is considered as a combination of the individual concepts Animal and Acts, the ‘Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt’ version of Bell’s inequalities (‘CHSH inequality’) is violated. We work out in this paper a quantum representation in Hilbert space for a dataset collected on the same combination of concepts using ‘Google Images’ as search engine, which ‘significantly violated’ the CHSH inequality. This result proves the existence of non-classical structures in visual perception and strongly indicates the presence of ‘quantum entanglement’ as an explanation for the meaning connection between the component concepts, also when this meaning connection is expressed through images.

DOI
10.1007/s00500-020-04692-3

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Abstract Various empirical tests performed on human participants and also by means of search engines on the Web reveal that, whenever the conceptual combination The Animal Acts is considered as a combination of the individual concepts Animal and Acts, the ‘Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt’ version of Bell’s inequalities (‘CHSH inequality’) is violated. We work out in this paper a quantum representation in Hilbert space for a dataset collected on the same combination of concepts using ‘Google Images’ as search engine, which ‘significantly violated’ the CHSH inequality. This result proves the existence of non-classical structures in visual perception and strongly indicates the presence of ‘quantum entanglement’ as an explanation for the meaning connection between the component concepts, also when this meaning connection is expressed through images.
We present the results of two tests where a sample of human participants were asked to make judgements about the conceptual combinations {\it The Animal Acts} and {\it The Animal eats the Food}. Both tests significantly violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell inequalities (`CHSH inequality'), thus exhibiting manifestly non-classical behaviour due to the meaning connection between the individual concepts that are combined. We then apply a quantum-theoretic framework which we developed for any Bell-type situation and represent empirical data in complex Hilbert space. We show that the observed violations of the CHSH inequality can be explained as a consequence of a strong form of `quantum entanglement' between the component conceptual entities in which both the state and measurements are entangled. We finally observe that a quantum model in Hilbert space can be elaborated in these Bell-type situations even when the CHSH violation exceeds the known `Cirel'son bound', in contrast to a widespread belief. These findings confirm and strengthen the results we recently obtained in a variety of cognitive tests and document and image retrieval operations on the same conceptual combinations.
We show that data collected from corpuses of documents violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell’s inequality (CHSH inequality) and therefore indicate the presence of quantum entanglement in their structure. We obtain this result by considering two concepts and their combination and coincidence operations consisting of searches of co-occurrences of exemplars of these concepts in specific corpuses of documents. Measuring the frequencies of these co-occurrences and calculating the relative frequencies as approximate probabilities entering in the CHSH inequality, we obtain manifest violations of the latter for all considered corpuses of documents. In comparing these violations with those analogously obtained in an earlier work for the same combined concepts in psychological coincidence experiments with human participants, also violating the CHSH inequality, we identify the entanglement as being carried by the meaning connection between the two considered concepts within the combination they form. We explain the stronger violation for the corpuses of documents, as compared to the violation in the psychology experiments, as being due to the superior meaning domain of the human mind and, on the other side, to the latter reaching a broader domain of meaning and being possibly also actively influenced during the experimentation. We mention some of the issues to be analyzed in future work such as the violations of the CHSH inequality being larger than the ‘Cirel’son bound’ for all of the considered corpuses of documents.
We work out a quantum-theoretic model in complex Hilbert space of a recently performed test on co-occurrencies of two concepts and their combination in retrieval processes on specific corpuses of documents. The test violated the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of the Bell inequalities ('CHSH inequality'), thus indicating the presence of entanglement between the combined concepts. We make use of a recently elaborated 'entanglement scheme' and represent the collected data in the tensor product of Hilbert spaces of the individual concepts, showing that the identified violation is due to the occurrence of a strong form of entanglement, involving both states and measurements and reflecting the meaning connection between the component concepts. These results provide a significant confirmation of the presence of quantum structures in corpuses of documents, like it is the case for the entanglement identified in human cognition.
We have proved in both human-based and computer-based tests that natural concepts generally ‘entangle’ when they combine to form complex sentences, violating the rules of classical compositional semantics. In this article, we present the results of an innovative video-based cognitive test on a specific conceptual combination, which significantly violates the Clauser–Horne–Shimony–Holt version of Bell's inequalities (‘CHSH inequality’). We also show that collected data can be faithfully modelled within a quantum-theoretic framework elaborated by ourselves and a ‘strong form of entanglement’ occurs between the component concepts. While the video-based test confirms previous empirical results on entanglement in human cognition, our empirical approach surpasses language barriers and eliminates the need for prior knowledge, enabling universal accessibility. Finally, this transformative methodology allows one to unravel the underlying connections that drive our perception of reality. As a matter of fact, we provide a novel explanation for the appearance of entanglement in both physics and cognitive realms.
We show that data collected from corpuses of documents violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell's inequality (CHSH inequality) and therefore indicate the presence of quantum entanglement in their structure. We obtain this result by considering two concepts and their combination and coincidence operations consisting of searches of co-occurrences of exemplars of these concepts in specific corpuses of documents. Measuring the frequencies of these co-occurrences and calculating the relative frequencies as approximate probabilities entering in the CHSH inequality, we obtain manifest violations of the latter for all considered corpuses of documents. In comparing these violations with those analogously obtained in an earlier work for the same combined concepts in psychological coincidence experiments with human participants, also violating the CHSH inequality, we identify the entanglement as being carried by the meaning connection between the two considered concepts within the combination they form. We explain the stronger violation for the corpuses of documents, as compared to the violation in the psychology experiments, as being due to the superior meaning domain of the human mind and, on the other side, to the latter reaching a broader domain of meaning and being possibly also actively influenced during the experimentation. We mention some of the issues to be analyzed in future work such as the violations of the CHSH inequality being larger than the 'Cirel'son bound' for all of the considered corpuses of documents.
We analyse the results of three information retrieval tests on conceptual combinations that we have recently performed using corpora of Italian language. Each test has the form of a ‘Bell-type test’ and was aimed at identifying ‘quantum entanglement’ in the combination, or composition, of two concepts. In the first two tests, we studied the Italian translation of the combination The Animal Acts, while in the third test, we studied the Italian translation of the combination The Animal eats the Food. We found a significant violation of Bell’s inequalities in all tests. Empirical patterns confirm the results obtained with corpora of English language, which indicates the existence of deep structures in concept formation that are language independent. The systematic violation of Bell’s inequalities suggests the presence of entanglement, and indeed, we elaborate here a ‘quantum model in Hilbert space’ for the collected data. This investigation supports our theoretical hypothesis about entanglement as a phenomenon of ‘contextual updating’, independent of the nature, micro-physical or conceptual-linguistic, of the entities involved. Finally, these findings allow us to further clarify the mutual relationships between entanglement, Cirel’son’s bound, and no-signalling in Bell-type situations.