Quantum Phenomenology of Action

Predictive, Executive, and Corrective Overlap as Temporal Superposition

Abstract

This paper develops a formal phenomenology of human action by integrating insights from phenomenology, predictive-processing neuroscience, and quantum formalism. It argues that action does not unfold as a linear sequence of prediction, execution, and correction but as a temporally superposed field in which these components coexist. To capture this simultaneity, the paper introduces a non-commutative operator model—ψₐ = α|P⟩ + β|E⟩ + γ|C⟩—representing action as a superposition of predictive, executive, and corrective states. Non-zero commutators ([Ê, P̂] ≠ 0) express the contextual dependence of temporal order, while measurement-like collapse corresponds to the emergence of determinate outcomes in lived experience. The framework thus reconceptualizes embodied agency as coherence within indeterminacy, offering a logical bridge between phenomenological temporality and contemporary neuroscience. The proposed model provides a minimal mathematical grammar for describing the non-classical, overlapping temporality that constitutes the lived structure of human action.