On the Foundations of the Brussels Operational-Realistic Approach to Cognition
Diederik Aerts, Massimiliano Sassoli de Bianchi, Sandro Sozzo

TL;DR
This paper develops a foundational quantum approach to cognition based on operational-realistic principles, extending traditional Hilbert space models with an advanced formalism to account for complex cognitive phenomena.
Contribution
It introduces an extended quantum formalism, the extended Bloch representation, to better model cognitive processes like question order effects and response replicability.
Findings
Empirical success of Hilbert space models supports quantum cognition validity.
Extended formalism addresses limitations of standard quantum models in cognition.
The framework remains within a unitary interpretative approach.
Abstract
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…
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