Quantum Structure in Cognition, Origins, Developments, Successes and Expectations

TL;DR

This paper reviews a decade of research demonstrating quantum structures in cognition, including concept formation, combination, and phenomena like entanglement, offering a quantum-theoretic framework that explains deviations from classical logic in human reasoning.

Contribution

The authors develop a quantum-theoretic model in Fock space for cognitive processes, introducing new quantum aspects like entanglement and indistinguishability in concept combinations.

Findings

Successful modeling of cognitive experiments using quantum structures

Identification of entanglement in concept combinations

Discovery of indistinguishability effects in cognition

Abstract

We provide an overview of the results we have attained in the last decade on the identification of quantum structures in cognition and, more specifically, in the formalization and representation of natural concepts. We firstly discuss the quantum foundational reasons that led us to investigate the mechanisms of formation and combination of concepts in human reasoning, starting from the empirically observed deviations from classical logical and probabilistic structures. We then develop our quantum-theoretic perspective in Fock space which allows successful modeling of various sets of cognitive experiments collected by different scientists, including ourselves. In addition, we formulate a unified explanatory hypothesis for the presence of quantum structures in cognitive processes, and discuss our recent discovery of further quantum aspects in concept combinations, namely, 'entanglement' and 'indistinguishability'. We finally illustrate perspectives for future research.