For the last one decade (Haven and Khrennikov, 2013 for example) there has been a surge of studies in cognitive modelling or its applications in social sciences based on a quantum-like formalism for ‘mind’. The current author is also involved in this quantum-like modelling approach, however, we need to now bring out some significant differences between quantum physics and cognitive modelling based on ‘quantum probability’ set up, for clarity and avoidance of oversimplifications.
Is mind really quantum? Is there any genuine quantum processes underlying brain functioning? These questions are still not fully answered, but we need to take a non-reductionist approach here. Several studies (Patra and Ghose, 2022 a, b) have shown convincingly that cognition, particularly, decision making exhibits certain quantum-likeness. However, this is better understood in terms of information theory and a different probabilistic formulation of decision making, as in contrast with standard classical probability theory based set up. Which also means (as Nobel winner Zeilnger expressed, some more general probabilistic theory might be more suitable for decision modelling) that, there might be even more general formalisms possible for cognition. However, as of now, quantum-like formalism is convincingly shown as more empirically supported than earlier formalism, even compared to completely heuristics based decision modelling (Khrennikov, 2023). Rather behavioral scientists even proposed that whether we should totally abandon any probabilistic set up for describing decision making. Quantum-like modelling answers this question in negative, and holds that quantum probability framework might be suitable for coherent and consistent descriptions of many ‘anomalies’ which are considered ‘irrational’ from classical probability set up.
