Can classical epistemic states be entangled?

  • Authors:

  • Harald Atmanspacher;Peter Beim Graben;Thomas Filk

  • Affiliations:

  • Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany and Parmenides Center for the Study of Thinking, Munich, Germany and Collegium Helveticum, ETH Zürich, Switzerland;Department of Linguistics, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, Berlin, Germany;Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology, Freiburg, Germany and Institute of Physics, University of Freiburg, Germany and Parmenides Center for the Study of Thinking, Munich, Germany

  • Venue:
  • QI'11 Proceedings of the 5th international conference on Quantum interaction
  • Year:
  • 2011

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

Entanglement is a well-known and central concept in quantum theory, where it expresses a fundamental nonlocality (holism) of ontic quantum states, regarded as independent of epistemic means of gathering knowledge about them. An alternative, epistemic kind of entanglement is proposed for epistemic states (distributions) of dynamical systems represented in classical phase spaces. We conjecture that epistemic entanglement is to be expected if the states are based on improper phase space partitions. The construction of proper partitions crucially depends on the system dynamics. Although improper partitions have a number of undesirable consequences for the characterization of dynamical systems, they offer the potential to understand some interesting features such as incompatible descriptions, which are typical for complex systems. Epistemic entanglement due to improper partitions may give rise to epistemic classical states analogous to quantum superposition states. In mental systems, interesting candidates for such states have been coined acategorial states, and among their key features are temporally nonlocal correlations. These correlations can be related to the situation of epistemic entanglement.