English

Contextuality Analysis of Impossible Figures

Neurons and Cognition 2020-09-04 v3 Probability

Abstract

This paper has two purposes. One is to demonstrate contextuality analysis of systems of epistemic random variables. The other is to evaluate the performance of a new, hierarchical version of the measure of (non)contextuality introduced in earlier publications. As objects of analysis we use impossible figures of the kind created by the Penroses and Escher. We make no assumptions as to how an impossible figure is perceived, taking it instead as a fixed physical object allowing one of several deterministic descriptions. Systems of epistemic random variables are obtained by probabilistically mixing these deterministic systems. This probabilistic mixture reflects our uncertainty or lack of knowledge rather than random variability in the frequentist sense.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2008.04053,
  title  = {Contextuality Analysis of Impossible Figures},
  author = {Víctor H. Cervantes and Ehtibar N. Dzhafarov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2008.04053},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

Entropy 2020, 22(9), 981; format of the published paper differs from this preprint

R2 v1 2026-06-23T17:44:50.302Z