creators_name: Aerts, Diederik
creators_name: Aerts, Sven
creators_name: Broekaert, Jan
creators_name: Gabora, Liane
editors_name: van der Merwe, Alwyn
type: journalp
datestamp: 2004-02-09
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:55:28
metadata_visibility: show
title: The Violation of Bell Inequalities in the Macroworld
ispublished: pub
subjects: cog-psy
full_text_status: public
keywords: Bell inequalities, quantum, nonlocality, uncertainty, microworld, macroworld, EPR paradox, Pitowsky inequalities, Clauser Horne Inequalities, category, concept, memory, distributed memory, entanglement, radial basis function, conceptual space, content addressability, abstraction, closure, phase transition, association, hierarchy, reminding, reminding
abstract: We show that Bell inequalities can be violated in the macroscopic world.
The macroworld violation is illustrated using an example involving
connected vessels
of water.  We show that whether the
violation of inequalities occurs in the microworld or in the macroworld, it
is the
identification of nonidentical events that plays a crucial role.
Specifically, we
prove that if nonidentical events are consistently differentiated,
Bell-type Pitowsky inequalities are no longer
violated, even for Bohm's example of two entangled spin 1/2 quantum
particles. We show how Bell inequalities can be
violated in cognition, specifically in the
relationship between abstract concepts and specific instances of these
concepts. This supports the hypothesis that
genuine quantum structure exists in the mind. We introduce a model where
the amount of nonlocality and the degree of
quantum uncertainty are parameterized, and demonstrate that increasing
nonlocality increases the degree of violation, while
increasing quantum uncertainty decreases the degree of violation.

date: 2000-10
date_type: published
publication: Foundations of Physics
volume: 30
number: 9
publisher: Plenum/Kluwer
pagerange: 1387-1414
refereed: TRUE
citation:   Aerts, Diederik and Aerts, Sven and Broekaert, Jan and Gabora, Liane  (2000) The Violation of Bell Inequalities in the Macroworld.  [Journal (Paginated)]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/3416/1/bell.pdf
document_url: http://cogprints.org/3416/2/bell.ps