Quantum cognition and interpretation of the fantastic in Virginia Hamilton’s Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush

Abstract

Fantasy requires a probabilistic theory of reasoning to explore how it enables the observer to create mental images from uncertainty. This study proposes a quantum cognitive approach to fantasy used for disclosing mental models of the character in uncertainty. For the uncertain individual, there exists a multiplicity of mentally incompatible but equally valid and complete representations (mental pictures) of the world. Contextualizing fantasy within the quantum cognitive principles, the novel Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush (1982) by Virginia Hamilton has been taken into consideration. In this novel the hesitation between psychological and supernatural explanations interrupts the predictive power about the real and affects mental models or cognitive states of the young character of the novel as the observer. The process of representing fantasy through complementarity, one of the quantum cognitive principles, shows that fantasy is a mixed state with a familiar probabilistic combination of states which reflect incomplete knowledge. The quantum principle of superposition has been used to explain the way an introspective mental experiment is initiated by the observer but not completed. The decision made by the observer is not a deterministic process that converges to a single mental representation. Rather it can evolve forever. To sum up, this article marks how quantum cognition can describe the uncertainty principle both on an emotional-behavioural and structural level when the observer entangles themselves within the irreducible indeterminacy of reality within fantasy.