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The Relevance of Bell-Type Inequalities for Mental Systems

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Quantum Interaction (QI 2013)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8369))

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Abstract

We compare some basic inequalities due to Bell and others, originally proposed to test hidden variable models in quantum theory, and explore their implications for mental systems. We find that violations of such inequalities outside quantum systems may exceed the quantum bound. We propose (conscious or unconscious) priming as a most intuitive and plausible interpretation for such violations and sketch a few examples supporting this conjecture.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For recent overviews see Atmanspacher (2011, Chap. 4.7), Busemeyer and Bruza (2012) and Wang et al. (2013). Note that the topics of these overviews must be delineated from various proposals concerning a literal quantum physics of the brain. See the review by Atmanspacher (2011) for a critical assessment of such approaches.

  2. 2.

    Briefly, the concept of priming means that exposure to a stimulus influences a response to another, usually later, stimulus. It is widely used in social and personality psychology; see Bargh and Chartrand (2000) for a review.

  3. 3.

    In psychology, invasivity is related to the lack of “selective influence” (Dzhafarov 2003). “Weak” measurements (Aharonov et al. 1988) might be an option to avoid invasivity. Is has also been suggested (Wilde and Mizel 2012) that “adroit” measurements may be used to test invasivity.

  4. 4.

    Note that we do not intend to apply the Fine inequality to identify a joint probability distribution over the four variables. We simply show that a violation of Fine’s inequality is possible in a purely classical system.

  5. 5.

    Intriguing work on the non-compositionality of concept combinations is due to Bruza et al. (2013), whose examples we use to illustrate our own hypotheses.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany

    Harald Atmanspacher & Thomas Filk

  2. Collegium Helveticum ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Harald Atmanspacher

  3. Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

    Thomas Filk

  4. Parmenides Center for the Study of Thinking, Munich, Germany

    Thomas Filk

Authors
  1. Harald Atmanspacher
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  2. Thomas Filk
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Harald Atmanspacher .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Harald Atmanspacher

  2. School of Management, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Emmanuel Haven

  3. Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Kirsty Kitto

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy Centre for Interdisciplinary Science, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom

    Derek Raine

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Atmanspacher, H., Filk, T. (2014). The Relevance of Bell-Type Inequalities for Mental Systems. In: Atmanspacher, H., Haven, E., Kitto, K., Raine, D. (eds) Quantum Interaction. QI 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8369. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54943-4_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-54943-4_21

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-54942-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-54943-4

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