Titel Deelnemers "Korte inhoud" "Development of a Thermodynamics of Human Cognition and Human Culture" "Diederik Aerts, Jonito Aerts Arguëlles, Lester Beltran, Sandro Sozzo" "Inspired by foundational studies in classical and quantum physics, and by information retrieval studies in quantum information theory, we prove that the notions of 'energy' and 'entropy' can be consistently introduced in human language and, more generally, in human culture. More explicitly, if energy is attributed to words according to their frequency of appearance in a text, then the ensuing energy levels are distributed non-classically, namely, they obey Bose-Einstein, rather than Maxwell-Boltzmann, statistics, as a consequence of the genuinely 'quantum indistinguishability' of the words that appear in the text. Secondly, the 'quantum entanglement' due to the way meaning is carried by a text reduces the (von Neumann) entropy of the words that appear in the text, a behaviour which cannot be explained within classical (thermodynamic or information) entropy. We claim here that this 'quantum-type behaviour is valid in general in human language', namely, any text is conceptually more concrete than the words composing it, which entails that the entropy of the overall text decreases. In addition, we provide examples taken from cognition, where quantization of energy appears in categorical perception, and from culture, where entities collaborate, thus 'entangle', to decrease overall entropy. We use these findings to propose the development of a new 'non-classical thermodynamic theory' for human cognition, which also covers broad parts of human culture and its artefacts and bridges concepts with quantum physics entities. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thermodynamics 2.0: Bridging the natural and social sciences (Part 2)'." "When Bertlmann Wears No Socks. Common Causes Induced by Measurements as an Explanation for Quantum Correlations" "Diederik Aerts, Massimiliano Sassoli De Bianchi" "It is well known that correlations produced by common causes in the past can- not violate Bell’s inequalities. This was emphasized by Bell in his celebrated example of Bertlmann’s socks. However, if common causes are induced by the very measurement process i.e., actualized at each run of a joint measurement, in a way that depends on the type of joint measurement that is being executed (hence, the common causes are contextually actualized), the resulting correla- tions are able to violate Bell’s inequalities, thus providing a simple and general explanation for the origin of quantum correlations. We illustrate this mecha- nism by revisiting Bertlmann’s socks example. In doing so, we also emphasize that Bell’s inequalities, in their essence, are about demarcating ‘non-induced by measurements’ (non-contextual) from ‘induced by measurements’ (contextual) common causes, where the latter would operate at a non-spatial level of our physical reality, when the jointly measured entangled entities are microscopic in nature." "Entanglement as a Method to Reduce Uncertainty" "Diederik Aerts, Jonito Aerts Arguëlles, Lester Beltran, Suzette Geriente, Sandro Sozzo" "In physics, entanglement ‘reduces’ the entropy of an entity, because the (von Neumann) qentropy of, e.g., a composite bipartite entity in a pure entangled state is systematically lower than the entropy of the component sub-entities. We show here that this ‘genuinely non-classical reduction of entropy as a result of composition’ also holds whenever two concepts combine in human cognition and, more generally, it is valid in human culture. On the basis of these results, we make a ‘new hypothesis’ on the nature of entanglement, namely, the production of entanglement in the preparation of a composite entity can be seen as a ‘dynamical process of collaboration between its sub-entities to reduce uncertainty’, because the composite entity is in a pure state while its sub-entities are in a non-pure state as a result of the preparation. We identify within the nature of this entanglement a mechanism of contextual updating and illustrate the mechanism in the examples we analyse. Our hypothesis naturally explains the non-classical nature of some quantum logical connectives, as due to Bell-type correlations." "Entanglement in Cognition violating Bell Inequalities Beyond Cirel'son's Bound" "Diederik Aerts, Diederik Johannes Aerts, Lester Beltran, Suzette Geriente, Sandro Sozzo" "We present the results of two tests where a sample of human participants were asked to make judgements about the conceptual combinations The Animal Acts and The Animal eats the Food. Both tests significantly violate the Clauser-Horne-Shimony-Holt version of Bell inequalities (‘CHSH inequality’), thus exhibiting manifestly non-classical behaviour due to the meaning connection between the individual concepts that are combined. We then apply a quantum-theoretical framework which we developed for any Bell-type situation and represent empirical data in complex Hilbert space. We show that the observed violations of the CHSH inequality can be explained as a consequence of a strong form of ‘quantum entanglement’ between the component conceptual entities in which both the state and measurements are entangled. We finally observe that a quantum model in Hilbert space can be elaborated in these Bell-type situations even when the CHSH violation exceeds the known ‘Cirel’son bound’, in contrast to widespread beliefs. These findings confirm and strengthen the results we recently obtained in a variety of cognitive tests and document and image retrieval operations on the same conceptual combinations." "Human Perception as a Phenomenon of Quantization" "Diederik Aerts, Jonito Aerts Arguëlles" "For two decades, the formalism of quantum mechanics has been successfully used to describe human decision processes, situations of heuristic reasoning, and the contextuality of concepts and their combinations. The phenomenon of 'categorical perception' has put us on track to find a possible deeper cause of the presence of this quantum structure in human cognition. Thus, we show that in an archetype of human perception consisting of the reconciliation of a bottom up stimulus with a top down cognitive expectation pattern, there arises the typical warping of categorical perception, where groups of stimuli clump together to form quanta, which move away from each other and lead to a discretization of a dimension. The individual concepts, which are these quanta, can be modeled by a quantum prototype theory with the square of the absolute value of a corresponding Schrödinger wave function as the fuzzy prototype structure, and the superposition of two such wave functions accounts for the interference pattern that occurs when these concepts are combined. Using a simple quantum measurement model, we analyze this archetype of human perception, provide an overview of the experimental evidence base for categorical perception with the phenomenon of warping leading to quantization, and illustrate our analyses with two examples worked out in detail." "A Planck Radiation and Quantization Scheme for Human Cognition and Language" "Diederik Aerts, Lester Beltran" "As a result of the identification of 'identity' and 'indistinguishability' and strong experimental evidence for the presence of the associated Bose-Einstein statistics in human cognition and language, we argued in previous work for an extension of the research domain of quantum cognition. In addition to quantum complex vector spaces and quantum probability models, we showed that quantization itself, with words as quanta, is relevant and potentially important to human cognition. In the present work, we build on this result, and introduce a powerful radiation quantization scheme for human cognition. We show that the lack of independence of the Bose-Einstein statistics compared to the Maxwell-Boltzmann statistics can be explained by the presence of a 'meaning dynamics', which causes words to be attracted to the same words. And so words clump together in the same states, a phenomenon well known for photons in the early years of quantum mechanics, leading to fierce disagreements between Planck and Einstein. Using a simple example, we introduce all the elements to get a better and detailed view of this 'meaning dynamics', such as micro and macro states, and Maxwell-Boltzmann, Bose-Einstein and Fermi-Dirac numbers and weights, and compare this example and its graphs, with the radiation quantization scheme of a Winnie the Pooh story, also with its graphs. By connecting a concept directly to human experience, we show that entanglement is a necessity for preserving the 'meaning dynamics' we identified, and it becomes clear in what way Fermi-Dirac addresses human memory. Within the human mind, as a crucial aspect of memory, in spaces with internal parameters, identical words can nevertheless be assigned different states and hence realize locally and contextually the necessary distinctiveness, structured by a Pauli exclusion principle, for human thought to thrive." "On the Irreversible Journey of Matter, Life and Human Culture" "Diederik Aerts, Massimiliano Sassoli De Bianchi" "Following in the footsteps of Schrödinger, we propose a unified view of matter, life and human culture, with particular emphasis on the role played by the second law of thermodynamics and the primordial matter–antimatter separation. In doing so, we highlight the fragility of ‘construction’ (order) and the robustness of ‘destruction’ (chaos), when they locally and contextually face each other within a same reality layer, and the power of ‘construction’ versus the weakness of ‘destruction’, when they oppose each other at the global historical level, which is a result of the irreversible choices that were made by ‘matter, life and human culture’ in the course of their evolution." "Are Words the Quanta of Human Language? Extending the Domain of Quantum Cognition" "Diederik Aerts, Lester Beltran" "In previous research, we showed that ‘texts that tell a story’ exhibit a statistical structure that is not Maxwell–Boltzmann but Bose–Einstein. Our explanation is that this is due to the presence of ‘indistinguishability’ in human language as a result of the same words in different parts of the story being indistinguishable from one another, in much the same way that ’indistinguishability’ occurs in quantum mechanics, also there leading to the presence of Bose–Einstein rather than Maxwell–Boltzmann as a statistical structure. In the current article, we set out to provide an explanation for this Bose–Einstein statistics in human language. We show that it is the presence of ‘meaning’ in ‘texts that tell a story’ that gives rise to the lack of independence characteristic of Bose–Einstein, and provides conclusive evidence that ‘words can be considered the quanta of human language’, structurally similar to how ‘photons are the quanta of electromagnetic radiation’. Using several studies on entanglement from our Brussels research group, we also show, by introducing the von Neumann entropy for human language, that it is also the presence of ‘meaning’ in texts that makes the entropy of a total text smaller relative to the entropy of the words composing it. We explain how the new insights in this article fit in with the research domain called ‘quantum cognition’, where quantum probability models and quantum vector spaces are used in human cognition, and are also relevant to the use of quantum structures in information retrieval and natural language processing, and how they introduce ‘quantization’ and ‘Bose–Einstein statistics’ as relevant quantum effects there. Inspired by the conceptuality interpretation of quantum mechanics, and relying on the new insights, we put forward hypotheses about the nature of physical reality. In doing so, we note how this new type of decrease in entropy, and its explanation, may be important for the development of quantum thermodynamics. We likewise note how it can also give rise to an original explanatory picture of the nature of physical reality on the surface of planet Earth, in which human culture emerges as a reinforcing continuation of life." "Violation of the Bell-CHSH inequality and marginal laws in a single-entity Bell-test experiment" "Diederik Aerts, Massimiliano Sassoli De Bianchi" "We describe a simple experimental setting where joint measurements performed on a single (classical or quantum) entity can violate both the Bell-CHSH inequality and the marginal laws (also called no-signaling conditions). Once emitted by a source, the entity propagates within the space of Alice’s and Bob’s detection screens, with the measurements’ outcomes corresponding to the entity being absorbed or not absorbed in a given time interval. The violation of the marginal laws results from the fact that the choice of the screen on the side of Alice affects the detection probability on the side of Bob, and vice versa, and we show that for certain screen choices the Bell-CHSH inequality can be violated up to its mathematical maximum. Our analysis provides a clarification of the mechanisms that could be at play when the Bell-CHSH inequality and marginal laws are violated in entangled bipartite systems, which would not primarily depend on the presence of a bipartite structure but on the fact that the latter can manifest as an undivided whole." "Preface of the Special Issue: International Symposium “Worlds of Entanglement” - Second Part" "Diederik Aerts, Massimiliano Sassoli De Bianchi, Sandro Sozzo, Tomás Veloz González"