We present a novel variant of decision making based on the mathematical theory of separable Hilbert spaces. This mathematical structure captures the effect of superposition of composite prospects, including many incorporated intentions, which allows us to describe a variety of interesting fallacies and anomalies that have been reported to particularize the decision making of real human beings. The theory characterizes entangled decision making, non-commutativity of subsequent decisions, and intention interference. We demonstrate how the violation of the Savage’s sure-thing principle, known (...) as the disjunction effect, can be explained quantitatively as a result of the interference of intentions, when making decisions under uncertainty. The disjunction effects, observed in experiments, are accurately predicted using a theorem on interference alternation that we derive, which connects aversion-to-uncertainty to the appearance of negative interference terms suppressing the probability of actions. The conjunction fallacy is also explained by the presence of the interference terms. A series of experiments are analyzed and shown to be in excellent agreement with a priori evaluation of interference effects. The conjunction fallacy is also shown to be a sufficient condition for the disjunction effect, and novel experiments testing the combined interplay between the two effects are suggested. (shrink)

ResumeLes avancées que la physique a effectuées au cours de notre siècle rendent intertables beaucoup des vues de la philosophie réaliste traditionnelle. Mais ce n'est pas à dire que la position réaliste, conçue au sens large, doive, ou même puisse, être abandonée. Le texte vise à montrer qu'il n'en est rien. Plus précisément il cherche àétablir que l'idée ? une réalité dont l'existence ne relève pas de l'esprit humain demeure une idée nécessaire, qu'il est même légitime de concevoir une telle (...) réalité comme entrevue gräce aux activités noétiques de l'homme, mais que cependant il semble aujourd'hui hautement présomptueux de concevoir les choses observées comme des éléments de la ≫réalité≫ dont il s'agit. Les phénomènes, qui sont l'objet de la physique, constituent cependant eux‐mêmes une réalité en un autre sens, puisqu'ils forment un ensemble doué? une forte structuration et ? une relative mais large autonomic par rapport à nous. La distinction proposée entre ≫réalité indépendante≪ ‐ dont ľ'existence ne reléve pas de l'homme ‐ et ≫réalité empirique≪ ‐ ou ensemble des phénoménes ‐ paraît done maintenant être une bonne clé pour l'intelligence du donné.SummaryThe advances of physics in this century have made a number of views of traditional realist philosophy untenable. But this is not to say that the ‘realist position, in the broad sense', must or even can be abandoned ‐ as it is the aim of this work to show. More specifically, the aim is to establish that the idea of ‘reality, the existence of which does not depend of the human mind', remains necessary, that one may even consider that the noetic activities of men let them catch a glimpse of the reality in question, but that today, however, it seems highly presumptuous to consider observed things as elements of the “reality” that we are concerned with here. Phenomena, which are the subject of physics, do however constitute a reality in another sense, since they form a whole endowed with structure and with a relative but extensive autonomy in relation to us. The proposed distinction between “independent reality” ‐ the existence of which does not depend on man ‐ and “empirical reality” ‐ or all phenomena taken together ‐ would therefore appear to be a good key to the understanding of raw data. (shrink)

Depending on different positions in the debate on scientific realism, there are various accounts of the phenomena of physics. For scientific realists like Bogen and Woodward, phenomena are matters of fact in nature, i.e., the effects explained and predicted by physical theories. For empiricists like van Fraassen, the phenomena of physics are the appearances observed or perceived by sensory experience. Constructivists, however, regard the phenomena of physics as artificial structures generated by experimental and mathematical methods. My paper investigates the historical (...) background of these different meanings of phenomenon in the traditions of physics and philosophy. In particular, I discuss Newton’s account of the phenomena and Bohr’s view of quantum phenomena, their relation to the philosophical discussion, and to data and evidence in current particle physics and quantum optics. (shrink)

L'épuisement de la querelle du réalisme en physique, qui est la conséquence épistémologique de la divergence inexplicable entre mécanique quantique et physique relativiste, manifeste la nécessité d'un dépassement de l'opposition traditionnelle entre réalisme et antiréalisme. La Théorie de la Relativité d'Échelle de Laurent Nottale, dans la mesure où elle vise à réunifier microphysique et macrophysique grâce aux concepts d'espace-temps fractal et de dépendance d'échelle, opère le dépassement de cette opposition en postulant la valeur d'être des relations physiques. L'exigence d'un réalisme (...) des relations en physique confirme ainsi les intuitions de la philosophie de l'individuation de Gilbert Simondon, qui jugeait nécessaire d'accorder à la relation une valeur ontologique pour fonder la «synthèse grandiose de la relativité et des quanta ». (shrink)

Quantum cognition in decision making is a recent and rapidly growing field. In this paper, we develop an expected utility theory in a context of non-classical uncertainty. We replace the classical state space with a Hilbert space which allows introducing the concept of quantum lottery. Within that framework, we formulate axioms on preferences over quantum lotteries to establish a representation theorem. We show that demanding the consistency of choice behavior conditional on new information is equivalent to the von Neumann–Lüders postulate (...) applied to beliefs. A dynamically consistent quantum-like agent may violate dynamic recursive consistency, however. This feature suggests interesting applications in behavioral economics as we illustrate in an example of persuasion. (shrink)