Tsuchiya Naotsugu, Bruza Peter, Yamada Makiko, Saigo Hayato, Pothos Emmanuel M
Faculty of Medicine, Nursing, and Health Sciences, School of Psychological Sciences, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Center for Information and Neural Networks (CiNet), National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Suita-shi, Osaka, Japan.
Front Psychol. 2025 Apr 3;15:1406459. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1406459. eCollection 2024.
To arbitrate theories of consciousness, scientists need to understand mathematical structures of quality of consciousness, or qualia. The dominant view regards qualia as points in a dimensional space. This view implicitly assumes that qualia can be measured without any effect on them. This contrasts with intuitions and empirical findings to show that by means of internal attention qualia can change when they are measured. What is a proper mathematical structure for entities that are affected by the act of measurement? Here we propose the mathematical structure used in quantum theory, in which we consider qualia as "observables" (i.e., entities that can, in principle, be observed), sensory inputs and internal attention as "states" that specify the context that a measurement takes place, and "measurement outcomes" with probabilities that qualia observables take particular values. Based on this mathematical structure, the Quantum-like Qualia (QQ) hypothesis proposes that qualia observables interact with the world, as if through an interface of sensory inputs and internal attention. We argue that this qualia-interface-world scheme has the same mathematical structure as observables-states-environment in quantum theory. Moreover, within this structure, the concept of a "measurement instrument" in quantum theory can precisely model how measurements affect qualia observables and states. We argue that QQ naturally explains known properties of qualia and predicts that qualia are sometimes indeterminate. Such predictions can be empirically determined by the presence of order effects or violations of Bell inequalities. Confirmation of such predictions substantiates our overarching claim that the mathematical structure of QQ will offer novel insights into the nature of consciousness.
为了仲裁意识理论，科学家需要理解意识质量的数学结构，即感受质。主流观点将感受质视为维度空间中的点。这种观点隐含地假设感受质可以在不产生任何影响的情况下进行测量。这与直觉和实证研究结果形成对比，这些结果表明，通过内部注意力，感受质在被测量时会发生变化。对于受测量行为影响的实体，其合适的数学结构是什么？在此，我们提出量子理论中使用的数学结构，其中我们将感受质视为“可观测量”（即原则上可以被观测的实体），将感官输入和内部注意力视为指定测量发生背景的“状态”，以及将具有感受质可观测量取特定值概率的“测量结果”。基于这种数学结构，类量子感受质（QQ）假说提出，感受质可观测量与世界相互作用，就好像是通过感官输入和内部注意力的界面。我们认为，这种感受质 - 界面 - 世界方案与量子理论中的可观测量 - 状态 - 环境具有相同数学结构。此外，在这个结构中，量子理论中“测量仪器”的概念可以精确地模拟测量如何影响感受质可观测量和状态。我们认为，QQ自然地解释了感受质的已知属性，并预测感受质有时是不确定的。这样的预测可以通过顺序效应的存在或贝尔不等式的违反通过实证来确定。对这些预测的证实证实了我们的总体主张，即QQ的数学结构将为意识的本质提供新的见解。
