Related papers: Quantum panprotopsychism and the combination probl…

The hard problem of consciousness is the question how subjective experience arises from brain matter. I suggest exploring the possibility that quantum physics could be part of the answer. The simultaneous unity and complexity of subjective…

One of quantum theory's salient features is its apparent indeterminism, i.e. measurement outcomes are typically probabilistic. We formally define and address whether this uncertainty is unavoidable or whether post-quantum theories can offer…

There has been a strong recent interest in applying quantum mechanics (QM) outside physics, including in cognitive science. We analyze the applicability of QM to two basic properties in opinion polling. The first property (response…

Quantum Darwinism posits that the emergence of a classical reality relies on the spreading of classical information from a quantum system to many parts of its environment. But what are the essential physical principles of quantum theory…

Although the suspicion that quantum mechanics is emergent has been lingering for a long time, only now we begin to understand how a bridge between classical and quantum mechanics might be squared with Bell's inequalities and other…

QBism pursues the real by first eliminating the elements of quantum theory too fragile to be ontologies on their own. Thereafter, it seeks an "ontological lesson" from whatever remains. Here, we explore this program by highlighting three…

To understand the foundations of quantum mechanics, we have to think carefully about how theoretical concepts are rooted in -- and limited by -- the nature of experience, as Bohr attempted to show. Geometrical pictures of physical phenomena…

In physics, there is the prevailing intuition that we are part of a unique external world, and that the goal of physics is to understand and describe this world. This assumption of the fundamentality of objective reality is often seen as a…

Philosophers of science commonly connect ontology and science, stating that these disciplines maintain a two-way relationship: on the one hand, we can extract ontology from scientific theories; on the other hand, ontology provides the…

Quantum mechanics---the theory describing the fundamental workings of nature---is famously counterintuitive: it predicts that a particle can be in two places at the same time, and that two remote particles can be inextricably and…

We provide an overview of the results we have attained in the last decade on the identification of quantum structures in cognition and, more specifically, in the formalization and representation of natural concepts. We firstly discuss the…

It has been experimentally demonstrated that quantum coherence can persist in macroscopic phenomena [J.R. Friedman et al.,Nature, 406 (2000) 43]. To face the challenge of this new fact, in this article QM in its standard form is assumed to…

Although time is one of our most intuitive physical concepts, its understanding at the fundamental level is still an open question in physics. For instance, time in quantum mechanics and general relativity are two distinct and incompatible…

A number of phenomena generally believed characteristic of quantum mechanics and seen as interpretively problematic--the incompatibility and value-indeterminacy of variables, the non-existence of dispersion-free states, the failure of the…

In this paper we attempt to provide a physical representation of quantum superpositions. For this purpose we discuss the constraints of the quantum formalism to the notion of possibility and the necessity to consider a potential realm…

If quantum mechanics is taken for granted the randomness derived from it may be vacuous or even delusional, yet sufficient for many practical purposes. "Random" quantum events are intimately related to the emergence of both space-time as…

This article presents a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics. It extends the meaning of ``measurement'' to include all property-indicating facts. Intrinsically space is undifferentiated: there are no points on which a world of locally…

An out of the box intellectual path exploring the foundations of quantum mechanics is discussed in some detail, in order to clarify why a possibly different way to look at the relevant fundamental questions can be identified and can support…

In the present article we consider the conjunction fallacy, a well known cognitive heuristic experimentally tested in cognitive science, which occurs for intuitive judgments in situations of bounded rationality. We show that the quantum…

It is argued that the problem of interpreting quantum mechanics, and the philosophical problem of consciousness, both have their roots in the same set of misguided Cartesian assumptions. The confusions underlying those assumptions are…