Introducing “Quantum-like Qualia hypothesis: from Quantum Cognition to Quantum Perception”

Just accepted by Frontiers in Psychology! “Quantum-like Qualia hypothesis: from Quantum Cognition to Quantum Perception” https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/9m5yp

by Tsuchiya, Bruza, Yamada, Saigo, Pothos. Learned a lot from writing this. Very happy to see it finally accepted!

This paper introduces mathematical structure of quantum theory to better understand mathematical structure of qualia and associated psychological processes.

I’ve been always unsatisfied with “points in space” models of qualia (though it’s intuitive and useful…)

A concept of “observables” that are distinguished from “states” in quantum theory is one of the most important ideas in the paper.

I think this fits with various issues associated with the issues around attention and consciousness = qualia. Hope you find it interesting!

By considering “observables”=qualia, “states”=sensory input + attention, we can now precisely model how some combinations of qualia cannot be simultaneously experienced while others are possible. We can use theories of “quantum measurement instruments” in the future.

We call this Quantum-like Qualia (QQ) hypothesis. QQ can be tested in various ways empirically. We wrote a recipe for empirical experiments in Section 4. Some of which are undergoing in our lab!

The more I learn about quantum theory, the more sympathetic I became to people proposing “quantum” to solve consciousness-brain problem.

However, in my view, it is “mathematical structure of quantum theory” that is more important. Not microscopic “quantum phenomena”.

Quantum cognition in decision making has been quite successful. I imagine it will be even more so in the future, thanks to the introduction of the “instrument” theory. They used only quantum math. Not quantum brain.

“Classical” math / concepts assume that qualia are like “things”. Points in the space. This assumes that they can be “measured” in principle without any disturbance to it.

QQ assumes “by default” that measurement affects qualia. (Note that it means classical situations arise in many cases). Depending on attention and sensory inputs (and other contexts), observable=qualia can result in different measurement outcomes.

Yet, this is not the same to say qualia DO not exist before measurement. I think they DO. We need proper methods to estimate what qualia were like before the measurements (We can do this with quantum instrument theory!).

We need to write how to define measurements. And a couple of papers to elaborate on QQ concepts with scientific evidence to come in the next few years.

QQ will hopefully become a quantitative theory like IIT. QQ targets the relationship between qualia and attention.
Causal structural theories (like IIT) would need to be combined with a dynamical/empirical theory like QQ. QQ aims to provide quantitative explanation on the experimental data related qualia. Otherwise, how can we empirically test IIT on the issue of qualia?!