What we call “quantum” does not necessarily concern only the microscopic world, nor does it depend essentially on the specificity of the material systems being observed. Rather, it designates a particular form of organization, which can manifest whenever an entity is placed in a context capable of modifying its state by actualizing one among several potential properties.
Classical physics describes systems whose properties preexist observation and whose probabilities reflect our ignorance about their actual state. Quantum mechanics, by contrast, introduces a more radical situation: the act of measurement, that is, the observational act, does not merely reveal properties that are already actual, but participates in their creation. Quantum probabilities, then, do not express mere ignorance about the state of the observed entity, but a subtler ignorance about the interactions that, contextually and unpredictably in advance, become actualized between the system and the measurement apparatus. In this reading, quantum indeterminism is not attributed to hidden variables pertaining to the state of the measured entity, but to the irreducible fluctuations that define the observational context.
This distinction makes it possible to understand why macroscopic systems with quantum-like behavior can exist, such as the celebrated “quantum machines” devised since the 1980s by Diederik Aerts and collaborators, capable of generating probabilistic structures similar to those of microscopic systems, not describable by classical probability theory. The quantum thus appears as a particular relational modality, not as an ontological mark reserved for the microworld.
A decisive step consists in recognizing that quantum entities, prior to a measurement – for instance, of their position – are not simply “in an unknown position”: more radically, they possess no actual position at all. In this sense, they are non-spatial entities. It follows that space is not the sole theater of their existence, but the domain in which they can manifest when they are induced by an interaction to produce an outcome of a spatial nature. So-called quantum nonlocality can then be reinterpreted as the expression of a more fundamental non-spatiality.
In recent decades, the quantum formalism – and, more generally, quantum-like mathematical structures – has proved surprisingly effective in modeling numerous cognitive phenomena. Human concepts, in fact, do not behave as simple containers of exemplars, but as entities whose state depends on the semantic environment in which they are immersed. A concept can find itself in a more abstract or more concrete condition, combine with other concepts to generate new meanings, or be “measured” by a question that does not simply record a preexisting answer, but helps create it.
The success of such modeling has led to the development of a new field of inquiry, known as quantum cognition, and to the formulation, by one of its pioneers – Diederik Aerts – of the conceptuality hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, microphysical entities would possess an authentic conceptual nature, in the sense that they would interact with one another and with measurement apparatuses in a way analogous to how concepts interact with other concepts and with minds, understood here as dynamic memories sensitive to meaning. This does not mean anthropomorphizing matter and experimental apparatuses by attributing thoughts and consciousness to them. Rather, it means recognizing a profound structural commonality: both concepts and quantum entities can exist in more abstract or more concrete states, depend strongly on context, generate emergent properties, and produce non-classical correlations, such as entanglement, that cannot be reduced to a common cause in the past.
Within this framework, a quantum measurement appears as a transition from the abstract to the concrete, in which a measurement apparatus performs a function similar to that of a mind in relation to a concept, when it selects a specific meaning among the possible ones, in accordance with the semantics expressed in the experimental setting. Our physical reality would therefore not be composed of semantically inert objects, but of entities capable of entering into authentic dynamics of meaning.
This vision leads to a form of pancognitivism: not the naive idea that everything thinks like a human being, but the hypothesis that cognition, understood broadly as the contextual creation of emergent properties and the actualization of latent meanings, is a structural dimension of reality. Human cognition would then be only a recent manifestation of a more general organizing principle, already present, at different levels, in nature.
In this sense, the conceptuality interpretation proposes a profound paradigm shift. The quantum, together with its possible structural variations, should not be understood only as a theory of the microscopic, but as a general, and perhaps universal, language for describing dynamics governed by the level of meaning: genuinely irreversible dynamics, in which the actual breaks the symmetry of the potential. It invites us to move beyond the classical image of a reality made of objects localized in space, endowed with properties that are always predefined, and to replace it with a dynamic and relational vision in which matter, meaning, and cognition appear as aspects of one and the same process of manifestation.
This perspective may also prove especially fruitful in offering a paradigm capable of rethinking the relationship between cognition, reality, and evolution. Contemporary disciplines, not only scientific but also humanistic, today confront increasingly complex phenomena and a plurality of interpretive contexts; in other words, they confront a reality in continuous transformation, in which the natural, the cultural, and the artificial are increasingly and profoundly intertwined. The conceptuality approach makes it possible to read these different perspectives on reality not as purely subjective constructions, nor as mere representations of an already-given world, but as acts of co-emergence governed by intelligent processes that unfold at multiple levels of reality. In such processes, the knower, the known, and their participatory context contribute to the continuous construction and reconstruction of reality, through the connective tissue of meaning.
The universe can then be interpreted as an abstract field in which culture and cognition are no longer exclusive aspects of human activity, but parts of a deeper fabric of reality. Within this fabric, the duality between bosons and fermions – that is, between force-mediating particles and matter-building particles – can be seen as the primordial form of the duality between conceptual entities, bearers of meaning, and cognitive entities, sensitive to meaning. This opens the possibility of thinking about the evolution of knowledge not as a passive mirroring of the world, but as a participatory process of discovery and creation. In this process, complexity progresses both from simplicity, through bottom-up dynamics, and from an already formed complexity capable of designing and actualizing further complex entities, through top-down dynamics. What emerges, then, is the image of a multidimensional evolutionary mega-process, which begins with matter-energy and reemerges, at increasingly articulated levels, in biological, cognitive, and cultural life.
For further reading:
Aerts, D., Sassoli de Bianchi, M. & Sozzo, S. (2025a). From Quantum Cognition to Conceptuality Interpretation I: Tracing the Brussels Group’s Intellectual Journey. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci 383 (2309), 20240382.
Aerts, D., Sassoli de Bianchi, M. & Sozzo, S. (2025b). From Quantum Cognition to Conceptuality Interpretation II: Unraveling the Quantum Mysteries. Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci 383 (2309), 20240381.
Aerts, D., Sassoli de Bianchi, M., Sozzo, S. & Veloz, T. (2020). On the Conceptuality interpretation of Quantum and Relativity Theories. Foundations of Science 25, pp. 5-54.
Aerts, D. & Sassoli de Bianchi, M. (2018). Quantum Perspectives on Evolution. In: The Map and the Territory: Exploring the Foundations of Science, Thought and Reality. Shyam Wuppuluri, Francisco Antonio Doria (Eds.) Springer: The Frontiers collection, pp. 571-595.