Modeling Human Decision-Making: An Overview of the Brussels Quantum Approach

Abstract

We present the fundamentals of the quantum theoretical approach we have developed in the last decade to model cognitive phenomena that resisted modeling by means of classical logical and probabilistic structures, like Boolean, Kolmogorovian and, more generally, set theoretical structures. We firstly sketch the operational-realistic foundations of conceptual entities, i.e. concepts, conceptual combinations, propositions, decision-making entities, etc. Then, we briefly illustrate the application of the quantum formalism in Hilbert space to represent combinations of natural concepts, discussing its success in modeling a wide range of empirical data on concepts and their conjunction, disjunction and negation. Next, we naturally extend the quantum theoretical approach to model some long-standing 'fallacies of human reasoning', namely, the 'conjunction fallacy' and the 'disjunction effect'. Finally, we put forward an explanatory hypothesis according to which human reasoning is a defined superposition of 'emergent reasoning' and 'logical reasoning', where the former generally prevails over the latter. The quantum theoretical approach explains human fallacies as the consequence of genuine quantum structures in human reasoning, i.e. 'contextuality', 'emergence', 'entanglement', 'interference' and 'superposition'. As such, it is alternative to the Kahneman-Tversky research programme, which instead aims to explain human fallacies in terms of 'individual heuristics and biases'.

Modeling Meaning Associated with Documental Entities: Introducing the Brussels Quantum Approach

“…Let us just mention, to give a few examples, Foskett's work in the eighties of last century [29], Agosti et al work in the nineties [30,31], and Sordoni et al more recent work, where the double-slit experiment analogy is also used to investigate quantum interference effects for topic models such as LDA [32]. 11 To conclude, let us observe that in the same way the quantum cognition program, and its effectiveness, does not require the existence of microscopic quantum processes in the human brain [27], the path "towards a quantum Web" that we have sketched here, and in [14], where the Web of written documents is viewed as a "collection of traces" left by an abstract meaning entity -the QWeb, -should not be confused with the path "towards a quantum Internet" [28], which is about constructing an Internet able to transmit "quantum information," instead of just "classical information," that is, information carried by entities allowing quantum superposition to also take place and be fully exploited. In the future, there will certainly be a Quantum Internet and a Quantum Web, that is, there will be a physical Internet more and more similar in structure to the abstract Web of meanings it conveys.…”

Probabilities and Epistemic Operations in the Logics of Quantum Computation

“…The operator NOT (1) represents a natural quantum generalization of the classical negation. We have:…”

“…Quantum information and quantum computation have inspired new developments of some basic concepts of the quantum theoretic formalism, which for a long time had been regarded as mysterious and potentially paradoxical. In this framework the concept of quantum probability has been investigated according to new perspectives, giving rise to possible applications to fields that are far apart from microphysics (cognitive and social sciences, semantics of natural languages and of the languages of art, see, for instance, [1][2][3]).…”

“…For instance, in the case of the space H (1) = C 2 the truth-concept P (1) 1 is identified with the projection P |1 that projects over the closed subspace determined by the bit |1 (corresponding to the classical truth-value 1). In this way, truth is dealt with as a special example of a mathematical representative for a possible physical event.…”

“…Interestingly enough, the contextual properties of the holistic quantum computational semantics allow us to understand and to justify (at least to a certain extent) some strange uses of the concept of probability that sometimes occur in the framework of intuitive ways of reasoning (for a general discussion of this problem see, for instance, [1]). For instance, assigning to a conjunction α ∧ β a probability-value greater than the probabilities of both members (α, β) is not necessarily "irrational" or "antiscientific".…”