Quantum Approach to Epistemic Semantics

TL;DR

This paper explores a quantum information-based framework for epistemic semantics, modeling agents' knowledge and belief states with quantum states and channels, revealing new insights into the nature of knowledge and information flow.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum logical approach to epistemic semantics, representing agents' knowledge with quantum states and channels, and analyzes the effects of measurement and relativistic-like phenomena.

Findings

Epistemic operations can be modeled as quantum channels, often non-unitary.

Knowledge acquisition involves irreversibility due to measurement and information loss.

Relativistic-like effects influence the behavior of epistemic agents.

Abstract

Quantum information has suggested new forms of quantum logic, called quantum computational logics, where meanings of sentences are represented by pieces of quantum information (generally, density operators of some Hilbert spaces), which can be stored and transmitted by means of quantum particles. This approach can be applied to a semantic characterization of epistemic logical operations, which may occur in sentences like "At time t0 Bob knows that at time t Alice knows that the spin-value is up". Each epistemic agent (say, Alice, Bob,...) has a characteristic truth-perspective, corresponding to a particular orthonormal basis of the Hilbert space C^2. From a physical point of view, a truth-perspective can be associated to an apparatus that allows one to measure a given observable. An important feature that characterizes the knowledge of any agent is the amount of information that is accessible to him/her (technically, a special set of density operators, which also represents the internal memory of the agent in question). One can prove that interesting epistemic operations are special examples of quantum channels, which generally are not unitary. The act of knowing may involve some intrinsic irreversibility due to possible measurement procedures or to a loss of information about the environment. We also illustrate some relativistic-like effects that arise in the behavior of epistemic agents.