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On the Foundations of the Brussels Operational-Realistic Approach to Cognition

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posted on 2016-11-09, 12:12 authored by D. Aerts, M. S. D. Bianchi, Sandro Sozzo
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 for cognitive processes, and the empirical success of the Hilbert space models derived by such investigation provides a strong theoretical confirmation of this validity. However, two situations in the cognitive realm, 'question order effects' and 'response replicability', indicate that even the Hilbert space framework could be insufficient to reproduce the collected data. This does not mean that the mentioned operational-realistic approach would be incorrect, but simply that a larger class of measurements would be in force in human cognition, so that an extended quantum formalism may be needed to deal with all of them. As we will explain, the recently derived 'extended Bloch representation' of quantum theory (and the associated 'general tension-reduction' model) precisely provides such extended formalism, while remaining within the same unitary interpretative framework.

History

Citation

Frontiers in Physics, 4:17.

Author affiliation

/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SOCIAL SCIENCES, ARTS AND HUMANITIES/School of Management

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Published in

Frontiers in Physics

Publisher

Frontiers Media

eissn

2296-424X

Acceptance date

2016-04-19

Copyright date

2016

Available date

2016-11-09

Publisher version

http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fphy.2016.00017/full

Notes

21 pages

Language

en

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