Quantum Structure in Cognition and the Foundations of Human Reasoning

TL;DR

This paper proposes a quantum-theoretic framework for understanding human reasoning, suggesting that cognitive processes involve a superposition of conceptual emergence and logical reasoning, explaining deviations from classical logic.

Contribution

It introduces a unifying quantum-inspired model of cognition that accounts for the dominance of conceptual reasoning over logical reasoning in human thought.

Findings

Human reasoning involves superposition of conceptual and logical processes

Deviations from classical logic are natural emergence phenomena

Quantum models effectively explain cognitive decision-making anomalies

Abstract

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, whose nature is emergence of new conceptuality, and a logical reasoning, founded on an algebraic calculus of the logical type. In most cognitive processes however, the former reasoning prevails over the latter. In this perspective, the observed deviations from classical logical reasoning should not be interpreted as biases but, rather, as natural expressions of emergence in its deepest form.