Decision-Making and Cognition Modeling from the Theory of Mental Instruments

The authors present the theory of quantum measurements in a humanities friendly way. The most general process of decision-making is represented with the aid of the formalism of quantum apparatuses and instruments. This measurement formalism generalizes the standard one based on the von Neumann–Luders projection postulate. Generalized quantum observables are mathematically represented as positive operator valued measures (POVMs) and state transformers resulting from the feedback of measurements to the states of systems that are given by quantum instruments. The quantum scheme of indirect measurements (a special realization of quantum instruments) is applied to model decision-making as resulting from the interaction between the belief and decision states. The authors analyze the specific features of quantum instruments which are important for cognitive and social applications. In particular, the state transformers given by quantum instruments are in general less invasive than the state projections. Thus quantum-like decision-making need not be viewed as a kind of state collapse.