ICCN_Pylkkanen_paper 2013-10-24.doc

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The 4th International Conference on Cognitive Neurodynamics ICCN2013VERY ROUGH DRAFT (2013-10-24) , PLEASE DO NOT CIRCULATE

Weak vs. strong quantum cognition

Paavo Pylkknen

Department of Cognitive Neuroscience and Philosophy, University of Skvde,

P.O. Box 408, SE-541 28 Skvde, Sweden andDepartment of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, P.O. Box 24, FI-

00014 University of Helsinki, Finland.

e-mail:[email protected]

Abstract In recent decades some cognitive scientists have adopted a program ofquantum cognition. For example, Pothos and Busemeyer (PB) argue that there are

empirical results concerning human decision-making and judgment that can beelegantly accounted for by quantum probability (QP) theory, while classical

(Bayesian) probability (CP) theory fails. They suggest that the reason why

quantum probability works better is because some cognitive phenomena are

analogous to quantum phenomena. This naturally gives rise to a further question

about why they are analogous. Is this a pure coincidence, or is there a deeper

reason? For example, could the neural processes underlying cognition involvesubtle quantum effects, thus explainingwhy cognition obeys QP? PB are agnostic

about this controversial issue, and thus their kind of program could be labeled asweak quantum cognition (analogously to the program of weak artificial

intelligence as characterized by Searle). However, there is a long tradition of

speculating about the role of subtle quantum effects in the neural correlates ofcognition, constituting a program of strong quantum cognition or quantumcognitive neuroscience. In this paper I will be considering the prospects of

strong quantum cognition, by briefly reviewing and commenting on some of thekey proposals.

Keywords

Quantum cognition, quantum probability, analogy

1. Introduction

In their recent Behavioral and Brain Science target article Can quantumprobability provide a new direction for cognitive modeling? Emmanuel Pothos

and Jerome Busemeyer (PB) (2013) make a convincing case that there are

empirical results concerning human decision making and judgment that can be

elegantly accounted for by quantum probability (QP) theory, while classical

(Bayesian) probability (CP) theory fails. In particular, they point out that human
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]:[email protected]


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judgment and preference often display order and context effects, violations of the

law of total probability and failures of compositionality, and that in such cases QP

- with features such as superposition and entanglement - provides a natural

explanation of cognitive process. More generally, they suggest that QP is

potentially relevant in any behavioral situation that involves uncertainty.

Such success in modeling raises the question of how can it be that QP

which was developed to account for quantum physical phenomena could possibly

be able to account for cognitive phenomena. PB do not discuss this issue at great

length, but suggest that the reason is because some cognitive phenomena are

analogous to quantum phenomena. But this gives rise to a further question: why

are these phenomena analogous to each other? Is it a mere coincidence or is there

some deeper explanation? For example, might the neural processes underlying

cognition be quantum-like in some way? PB remain agnostic about thiscontroversial issue, and thus we might call their program an instance of weak

quantum cognition (somewhat analogously to the program of weak AI in

artificial intelligence research; cf. also the program of weak quantum theory,

where one applies some, but not all formal features of quantum theory to explain

cognitive phenomena, see Atmaspacher et al. 2002). However, there is a long

tradition of speculating about the role of subtle quantum effects in the neural

correlates of cognition, constituting a program of strong quantum cognition or

quantum cognitive neuroscience. While it may be a good research strategy in

cognitive science to pursue weak quantum cognition without worrying about the

underlying reasons for why QP works for cognition, it would clearly be a major

scientific breakthrough is strong quantum cognition would turn out to be correct.

It is thus worth giving attention to the current state-of-the-art in strong quantumcognition. The aim of this paper is to briefly review and comment some major

developments.

2. Strong quantum cognition: subtle quantum effects in the neural correlates

of cognition?

There are various ways in which the neural processes underlying cognition could

be quantum-like. The strongest possibility is that they literally involve subtle

quantum effects. For example, following Niels Bohr, David Bohm speculated

about this possibility already in 1951 in his textbookQuantum theory.

Anticipating the current research on quantum cognition, he drew attention to what

he considered to be remarkable point-by-point analogies between quantum

processes and thought. He added that it would provide a natural explanation of

these analogies if it turned out that some key neural processes (e.g. in synapses)

were subject to quantum-theoretical limitations (for a discussion of Bohms

analogies see

Pylkknen 2004).

Harald Atmanspacher (2011) has provided a useful overview of various

programs of what I have above call strong quantum cognition. First of all, there


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are approaches that stay within the usual interpretation of the quantum theory.

There is the von Neumann-Wigner line of thought that assumes that consciousness

plays a role in quantum state reductions; in Stapps later development of this

approach the neural correlates of conscious intentional acts are assumed to involve

quantum state reductions. There is the Ricciardi-Umezawa-Vitiello approach that

sees mental states, particularly memory states, as vacuum states of quantum fields

(this approach has been given an imaginative philosophical interpretation by

Globus 2003). Finally, there is the Beck-Eccles approach, where it is assumed

that due to quantum mechanical processes the frequency of exocytosis at a

synaptic cleft can be controlled by mental intentions, without violating the

conservation of energy (for a discussion of this last approach see also Hiley and

Pylkknen 2005).

Atmanspacher also draws attention to programs of strong quantumcognition that involve further extensions or generalizations of present-day

quantum theory. Most notably, there is Penroses proposal that human (say

mathematical) insight is non-computable and that the physiological correlates of

such insight thus need to involve non-computable physical processes. He thinks

that such process might well be related to quantum state reduction. However,

Penrose is not satisfied with quantum state reduction as this is characterized in the

usual interpretation of quantum theory. Instead, he proposes that gravity brings

about the reduction under certain circumstances, which allows the possibility of an

orchestrated objective reduction (ORCH-OR) the idea being that the reduction

can take place without the activity of a human conscious observer, and in an

orchestrated way. This involves an extension of current quantum theory, in which

latter the state reductions obey the usual laws of quantum probability. Togetherwith Hameroff, Penrose proposed that neural microtubules might provide a site

where ORCH-ORs could take place. Their assumption is that ORCH-ORs in

neural microtubules constitute conscious moments. The idea is similar to Stapps

later ideas, but one difference is that while Stapp stays within the usual

interpretation of quantum theory, Penroses approach involves going beyond it (in

that the reductions can be objective and orchestrated, and need not obey the usual

quantum laws).

Those who advocate strong quantum cognition typically encounter the

criticism that quantum effects are washed out in the warm, wet and noisy

conditions of the macroscopic world and brains in particular (the decoherence

problem). It is thus concluded that quantum theory is only relevant to physical

processes in the (sub)atomic domain and should be ignored in other physical

domains. However, there are many recent research developments suggesting that

biological organisms at ordinary temperatures exploit subtle quantum effects, and

biological evolution would thus have been able to solve the decoherence problem

at least in some biological contexts (e.g. the studies on energy-harvesting in

photosynthesis and avian magnetoreception; for a short review, see Ball, P.

(2011)). As Atmanspacher points out, it is however still a controversial issue

whether subtle quantum processes play a significant role in the neural correlates of


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cognition and consciousness.

Note that those researchers who accept that cognition is quantum-like and

seek to explain this in neural terms need not necessarily adopt the program of

strong quantum cognition. For there is also the possibility that the neural processes

underlying cognition involve no subtle quantum effects, but can nevertheless give

rise to quantum-like neural activity. Something like this is implied by Barros and

Suppes (2009) when they suggest that classicalinterference in the brain may lead

to contextual processes. They refer to experimental work according to which

cortical oscillations may propagate in the cortex as if they were waves; and to

simulations of the mammalian brain which show the presence of interference in

the cortex.

3. Bohmian programmes of quantum cognition

We already mentioned briefly above that the physicist David Bohm speculated

early about strong quantum cognition in his 1951 textbook. At that time he was

thinking within the usual interpretation of quantum theory, and the analogies he

drew attention to then reflect this. As is well known, Bohms key long-term aim

was to understand quantum theory better, and this led him to develop a number of

different alternative schemes. Given his early intuition that quantum theory and

thought are analogous, it is not surprising that he applied the new ideas arising

from his various quantum schemes to describing the mind.

In 1952 Bohm published two articles inPhysical Review where he proposed

(following deBroglies earlier ideas) that an electron is a particle guided by a field.

In later work with Basil Hiley, Bohm emphasized that this field does not push andpull the particle mechanically but rather in-forms its energy. Thus, Bohm and

Hiley argued, the key new ontological feature of quantum theory is the existence

of objective and active information at the quantum level. Bohm extended this

model to include higher-levels of information, so that cognitive informational

processes could be connected to quantum information, which in turn could control

neurophysiological processes in, say, synapses. This line of research has been

developed by e.g. Pylkknen and Hiley. They propose that the approach enables

new ways of understanding such key philosophical problems as mental causation,

intentionality and even consciousness.

In Bohms active information scheme it is assumed that quantum theory

needs to be extended into a hierarchy of levels of active information, where the

human mind, for example, involves not only the lower levels, but also the more

subtle levels (Bohm claimed that such an extension of quantum theory is not

arbitrary, but natural from the physical and mathematical point of view). Some

of these levels are at the manifest, classical level while others are more subtle.

In perception, information encoded in manifest levels (e.g. in the form of printed

words) is carried toward the more subtle levels in the nervous system, where the

meaning of the information is apprehended. Such apprehension of meaning is an

activity, which crucially involves the organization of the lower levels of


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information. There is thus a two-way traffic between manifest and subtle levels.

It is in this way that we can understand how mind (understood as involving very

subtle physical levels) can influence the more manifest aspects of the physical

domain (e.g. the movement of the hand). In other words, we obtain a new way of

understanding mental causation.

One key idea is that the more subtle, physical (mental) levels are

influenced by and can also influence the lower, manifest levels. Mind is not

floating free from the quantum and classical levels, but can influence these latter,

thus providing a new way of understanding mental causation. The level of

quantum information is especially important in providing the missing link between

the traditional categories of physical and mental. Of course, it is a major unsolved

problem in the Bohm scheme what exactly is meant by the subtle levels. It

seems that Bohm meant both complex neurophysiological processes (alreadydescribed in cognitive neuroscience), and some subtle quantum and super-

quantum effects taking place in the brain but not yet discovered. Thus this is

currently a heavily speculative scheme which needs much further critical

examination and development. Yet, in my view, it has some advantages over the

other schemes of strong quantum cognition (see Hiley & Pylkknen 2005). It can

be argued that the Bohm-Hiley ontological interpretation provides currently the

best ontological scheme for quantum theory, and we need a clear quantum

ontology to tackle in a quantum-theoretical way the mind-matter problem, also

known as the ontological problem (Churchland 2013).

In the early 1960s Bohm began to seek a more general scheme in which

one could bring quantum theory and relativity together. This framework became

known as the implicate order. The implicate order refers to holistic phenomena,where, for example, information about the whole is enfolded in each region (as in

the movement of lights waves, which can be recorded in a hologram). Applied to

the universe, this suggests that the universe is a movement in which a holistic

order, the implicate order prevails thus the universe is holomovement. At each

moment a three-dimensional explicate order unfolds from the holomovement, only

to enfold back in the next moment. This process of unfoldment and enfoldment

takes place so rapidly that we do not see it but instead typically perceive an

enduring three-dimensional reality of macroscopic objects.

Bohm proposed that the implicate order is fundamental and general, and

also prevails in biological and psychological phenomena. For example, the

conscious experience of listening to music can be understood in terms of the

implicate order. A symphony involves a movement in which a total order builds

up and grows. At each moment we are most explicitly aware of certain tones,

while the previously explicate tones are experienced as enfolded, actively

transforming structures; our experience also involves an anticipation the future

tones. Bohm thus provided a new way of thinking and modeling a central issue in

phenomenology, namely time consciousness. This has been discussed in some

detail by Pylkknen (2007, ch 5). Such an application of the implicate order to

describe phenomenal experience can be seen as an instance of weak quantum


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cognition, as one is using a theoretical scheme inspired by quantum theory while

not claiming that phenomenal experience is literally a quantum phenomenon.

4. Discussion

Strong programs of quantum cognition typically underline the importance of

physical considerations when trying to understand they mind. However, this need

not imply the assumption that mental processes are reduced to some quantum

mechanical processes. []

References

Aerts, D. Quantum structure in cognition, Journal of Mathematical Psychology 53

(2009) 314-348.

Atmanspacher, Harald, (2011) Quantum Approaches to Consciousness, The

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =

Atmanspacher, H., Rmer, H., and Walach, H. (2002). Weak quantum theory:

Complementarity and entanglement in physics and beyond. Foundations of

Physics 32, 379406.

Ball, P. (2011) The dawn of quantum biology,Nature 474, pp. 272-274).

Barros, J.A. & Suppes, P. Quantum mechanics, interference and the brain, Journal

of Mathematical Psychology 53 (2009) 306-313.

Churchland, P. (2013) Matter and Consciousness. 3rd edition. Cambridge,

Mass.:MI TPress.

Globus, G. (2003) Quantum Closures and Disclosures: Thinking-together

postphenomenology and quantum brain dynamics. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Pothos, M & Busemeyer J. R. (2013) Can quantum probability provide a new

direction for cognitive modeling?Behavioral and Brain Science

Pylkknen, P. (2004) Can quantum analogies help us to understand the process of

thought?, in G. Globus, K. Pribram and G. Vitiello (eds.) Being and Brain. At the

Boundary between Science, Philosophy, Language and Arts, pp. 167-197.

Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


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