that is what I would like to explore. — unenlightened

With definition, in which case an exploration of logical consequence until that breaks down. A variation on the drunkard's search:

"A policeman sees a drunk man searching for something under a streetlight and asks what the drunk has lost. He says he lost his keys and they both look under the streetlight together. After a few minutes the policeman asks if he is sure he lost them here, and the drunk replies, no, and that he lost them in the park. The policeman asks why he is searching here, and the drunk replies, "this is where the light is""

Or without definition, in which you take what you get and do the best you can with it. On my view, with definition (the pattern is out there), you get what you want and the logic works until it breaks down. And without definition (where is the pattern, really), you still get pattern, all that you want, just not where it was supposed to be. And the logic seeming the same in either case.

In a very general sense, then, pattern recognition the essence of philosophy, but only in the sense that pattern conform to philosophy's needs, and not vice versa.

7.5k
that is what I would like to explore.
— unenlightened
With ... — tim wood

With other people, not you.

That reminds me, where's bartricks?

If I sort some pebbles by size, and put big ones here and little ones there I am imposing a pattern. — unenlightened

That's one way of imposing a pattern, yes. But the imposition I'm talking about isn't the physical intervention. It's what you thereby facilitate, which is reference, albeit silent. By the intervention you help the pebbles to refer, in a pair-wise manner, to certain appropriate relation words like 'larger-than'.

I admit that 'appropriate' gives pause to the nominalist who calls reference an imposition, rather than a fit. But it can be a fit to previous reference (and hence more or less appropriate), rather than to natural joints. I think someone made a similar point (about it never being from natural scratch), above, while fulminating against the very idea of an imposition.

I've now also admitted that I equate 'pattern', as a count noun, to predicate or sort or kind, which may be anathema.

You say you equate it, as an abstract mass noun, to compressibility, or simplicity.

Like 'information', perhaps it can be both, at least.

If I grab one of those ducks that are in a row and squeeze, I shall likely discover that ducks aren't always gentle and cute. It will bite and kick and quack up a storm. On the other hand, if I try to grab the row that they're putatively in, well, do you see a problem there? — tim wood

I think we have a problem with more than ‘rowness’ if we’re trying to determine the contribution of the subject to the experience of what we want to call the object. For instance, you said we discover features of the duck by bodily interacting with it. We reach out and squeeze. We then receive all kinds of feedback from the duck, such as tactile( we feel it bite and kick) , kinesthetic( we feel it’s resistance against our grasp), auditory ( we hear it quack), and we see all these behaviors. Perceptual psychologists will tell you that the data we actually receive from the world is very minimal. We fill in the rest based on expectations gained from prior experiences. In fact, our expectations and the data from the outside are so inextricably intertwined that it becomes impossible to separate out what is the subjective contribution and what is the objective contribution to our experience of the duck.

Once we remove from from the picture all of the background knowledge we bring to our experience of the ‘duck’ , all that is left is a constantly changing flow
of meaningless data. If I draw a Chinese linguistic form , someone who reads Chinese will
recognize it as a particular word concept. I would see it as an abstract series of shapes. A snake might see it as separated lines and curves. Which is the ‘real’ object? It depends on who is interacting with it. When we expereince a thing , whether it’s a neutrino or a duck, we are interacting with it in complex ways.

But what if we try and imagine the object independently of our interaction with it? Can’t we just disassemble the patterned complexity that we see ( construct) as the object into its components? But if the object for us , as a result of our constructive activity imposed on it , is nothing but this complex of relations, do the components exist in themselves pure and unrelaronal? Physics seems to be coming to the realization that there are no intrinsic and non-relational properties in the world. To be an entity is to be changing in some way i. relation to something else. This would seem to place the basis of pattern , in the form of irreducible relationality and transformation, at the heart of the so-called outside world. It may turn out to be the case that relational pattern , rather than intrinsic content , IS the basis of objective reality.

When you compare the hardware and the software of a computer, I’m sure you note
that the hardware is the ‘physical’ basis of it and the software is the ‘patterned’ implementation of the hardware. Would you want to argue that the software is somehow less real or secondary with respect to the hardware? But you wouldnt deny that the software allows us to make real changes in our brains and in the world. Furthermore , there is no way to reduce
e software language to a hardware language of physical causality without losing what is essential to the software description. But if software language is only secondary and derivative , there should be a way to convey all of the meaning of the software language via a hardware description.

This has led semiologists to conclude that codes and patterns are intrinsic to nature ( genetic code) , not just to minds.

Elsewhere, god be thanked!

How would it even be possible to discern, with apodeictic certainty, whether there are intrinsic patterns in Nature — Mww

By looking.

By looking. — Prishon

More so by communicating via the internet: bouncing the signal my words are transformed into around the world and collecting them into an equivalent image on your screen to the one on mine, to be confirmed by your making a sensible reply. Your looking on its own or my looking on its own might be a phantasm, but our communication cannot be. the pattern is demonstrated to be preserved in the invisible world.

Science is true because the magic works.

I wouldn' t call that Nature. Einstein hadn't internet means. Yet he saw the true Nature of the pattern of Mercury.

That works too, but it's less present to hand.

Patterns are not real in nature, only individual events exist. It is language concepts, then, that reify patterns such as ‘the sun rising’. — Possibility

What, your seeing the sun come above the horizon is not an event in nature? Or is not ;the earth becoming progressively illuminated also an event, even if not seen?

:up:

Physics seems to be coming to the realization that there are no intrinsic and non-relational properties in the world. — Joshs

But the world is brimful with relations that don't require us to be noticing them, or even involve us at all, in order to exist.

there is no way to reduce
e software language to a hardware language of physical causality without losing what is essential to the software description. But if software language is only secondary and derivative , there should be a way to convey all of the meaning of the software language via a hardware description.

This has led semiologists to conclude that codes and patterns are intrinsic to nature ( genetic code) , not just to minds. — Joshs

:up:

The codes and patterns that are intrinsic to nature that you assert in the second passage quoted above are the intrinsic relational properties of the world, which nonetheless do not need us to create, or even mediate, their existence it would seem.

It may turn out to be the case that relational pattern , rather than intrinsic content , IS the basis of objective reality. — Joshs

:up: Hence everything is information!

But the world is brimful with relations that don't require us to be noticing them, or even involve us at all, in order to exist. — Janus

This would be the tree in the forest problem? If nobody sees it, does it fall? :smile:

But the world is brimful with relations that don't require us to be noticing them, or even involve us at all, in order to exist.

The codes and patterns that are intrinsic to nature that you assert in the second passage quoted above are the intrinsic relational properties of the world, which nonetheless do not need us to create, or even mediate, their existence it would seem. — Joshs

Yea, this is the realist conclusion of semiologists. And their patron saint, Charles Peirce, found it necessary to ground all this subject-independence in a Divine origin.

At any rate, realist semiology asks why it should be necessary to attach all phenomena to the subject in order to arrive at a perfectly satisfactory account of the way things are. Postmodern philosophers respond that if we examine closely what it is we are doing when we posit a world independent of us , and a history that can be extracted independently of our present , we will find that the idea of subject-independent phenomena is no longer useful, interesting or even coherent.

Specifically , they claim that when we imagine or theorize about the oldest and simplest forms of existence , those most distant in time from the appearance of human beings, we are not only making use of the latest cultural
understanding to model this subject-independence, but there isn’t a single aspect of our natural history model that isn’t completely beholden to the current framework that defines its terms. The reason for this is that the basis of any inquiry into what ‘is’ or what ‘was’ is a pragmatic affair. What ‘is’ only has sense for us in relation to our aims, goals and purposes. When we ask what exists we are always asking what we can do with a thing. Being and use are not separate issues, they are the same issue.

Now, what if one acknowledges this and still wants to maintain that there is and was a subject independent world? It becomes a powerless notion, because unlike the Kantian thing in itself , the postmodernist ‘outside world’ doesn’t unidirectionally shape our representations of it. They argue that history must be distinguished from historicism. Historicism assumes we can retrieve intact previous eras of human or natural history in order to study them. But the actual historical nature of our experiencing of the world precludes such a duplication of what was. Instead , historical study is always revision and reinterpretation. To return to the most archaic past is always to move into a new future.

This would be the tree in the forest problem? If nobody sees it, does it fall? — Pop

Well, something changes doesn't it, such that if we were to be there after it had happened, we would see the tree fallen?

Well, something changes doesn't it, such that if we were to be there after it had happened, we would see the tree fallen? — Janus

Yes, but it's about a way of seeing things. Whether certain paradigms are consistent with reality, or not. Obviously much must happen outside of our awareness, but it is only the things within our awareness that can create our reality, no?

We can take this deeper, if information is an evolutionary interaction of form, then information causes a physical change to our neural patterning, thus physically informing us of externalities. And we thus interact with that physical informing, rather than an external world. What we are, what it is, is a consequence of that physical neural informing. This way of understanding takes into account such things as colour, sound, smell, taste - things that science tells us do not exist in the external world. In the external world there are frequencies of light, vibrations, discreet particles, etc.

What I am describing is the Enactivist paradigm, which I believe is the best conception of reality I have come across, slightly better than idealism.

Whether certain paradigms are consistent with reality, or not. — Pop

I'd say all valid paradigms are consistent with (what we know of) reality, until they're not. If they're not it means they've been falsified by some new observation or experimental result.

And we thus interact with that physical informing, rather than an external world. — Pop

Wouldn't the process of the physical informing be in part at least the action of an external (to my body) world? How else could we understand it?

I don't have a problem with the enactivist paradigm, providing it is acknowledged that it is not just we humans who are doing the enacting, The appearance to us of the external (to our bodies) world is a collaborative enactment between our bodies and the external world in which they are embedded, and latter provides the medium within which our enactments can occur.

How does pattern recognition happen?
— unenlightened

Perception & Memory

1. Perceive A, parts & whole. Record in memory

2. Perceive B, parts & whole. Cross-check perception of A with memory of A. Match! Pattern. No match! No pattern.
— TheMadFool

But you left out the rest of the question.

How does the immune system recognise the breakdown products of cell death? How does a computer learn to play Go, and come up with a strategy that had not been known to humans?
— unenlightened

Are you saying that computers and enzymes have perceptions and memories? — unenlightened

I was referring to human pattern recognition by what I said and yes, the immune system and computers could be treated as functioning analogously but not necessarily identically.

The immune system and computers have their own version of memory and perception but, mind you, it doesn't look like they're thinking like human brains do.

is the very substance of the faculty of understanding, and the whole basis of prediction. It is surely what big brains are evolved to do. — unenlightened

If that's true, then we're addicted to mystery, because without it, we slip into dementia.

The appearance to us of the external (to our bodies) world is a collaborative enactment between our bodies and the external world in which they are embedded, and latter provides the medium within which our enactments can occur. — Janus

Yes, I'm glad you understand how we are enmeshed into the whole biosphere evolving, otherwise enactivism might lead you to some sort of solipsistic ideation, which is total BS nonsense once you have a systems understanding. :up:

If that's true, then we're addicted to mystery, because without it, we slip into dementia. — frank

That would explain the ubiquity of puzzles. I believe mental stimulation is recommended...

That would explain the ubiquity of puzzles. I believe mental stimulation is recommended... — unenlightened

Exactly. We'll manufacture puzzles to simplify if we need more mystery to engage.