The quantum nature of identity in human thought: Bose-Einstein statistics for conceptual indistinguishability

DOI10.1007/S10773-015-2620-4MaRDI QIDQ904492zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Diederik Aerts, Sandro Sozzo, Tomas Veloz

Publication date 13 January 2016

Published in International Journal of Theoretical Physics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1410.6854

zbMATH Keywords

quantum statisticsindistinguishabilityquantum cognitionconceptual identity

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

General and philosophical questions in quantum theory (81P05) Commutation relations and statistics as related to quantum mechanics (general) (81S05) Many-body theory; quantum Hall effect (81V70)

Abstract: Increasing experimental evidence shows that humans combine concepts in a way that violates the rules of classical logic and probability theory. On the other hand, mathematical models inspired by the formalism of quantum theory are in accordance with data on concepts and their combinations. In this paper, we investigate a novel type of concept combination were a number is combined with a noun, e.g., `Eleven Animals. Our aim is to study 'conceptual identity' and the effects of 'indistinguishability' - in the combination 'Eleven Animals', the 'animals' are identical and indistinguishable - on the mechanisms of conceptual combination. We perform experiments on human subjects and find significant evidence of deviation from the predictions of classical statistical theories, more specifically deviations with respect to Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics. This deviation is of the 'same type' of the deviation of quantum mechanical from classical mechanical statistics, due to indistinguishability of microscopic quantum particles, i.e we find convincing evidence of the presence of Bose-Einstein statistics. We also present preliminary promising evidence of this phenomenon in a web-based study.

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Cited in

(15)

• The problem of identity and a justification for a non-reflexive quantum mechanics
• Identity versus determinism: Émile Meyerson's neo-Kantian interpretation of the quantum theory
• A non-spatial reality
• Quantum structure in cognition: human language as a boson gas of entangled words
• Quantum-like non-separability of concept combinations, emergent associates and abduction
• How images combine meaning: quantum entanglement in visual perception
• Using empirical data to estimate potential functions in commodity markets: some initial results
• Modeling human decision-making: an overview of the Brussels quantum approach
• Is there something quantum-like about the human mental lexicon?
• On a probabilistic derivation of the basic particle statistics (Bose-Einstein, Fermi-Dirac, canonical, grand-canonical, intermediate) and related distributions
• Quantum structure in cognition and the foundations of human reasoning
• Statistical and subjective interpretations of probability in quantum-like models of cognition and decision making
• What is quantum? Unifying its micro-physical and structural appearance
• The state context property formalism: from concept theory to the semantics of music
• On the conceptuality interpretation of quantum and relativity theories

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