Don't go Jordan Peterson on me!

Don't go Jordan Peterson on me! — TheMadFool

Ugh! Not likely! Where did that come from?

Ugh! Not likely! Where did that come from? — Possibility

Just a feeling...

Just a feeling... — TheMadFool

No, seriously - where the hell did that association come from?

If you’re going to make comparisons like that, you’d better be prepared to back it up.

No, seriously - where the hell did that association come from?

If you’re going to make comparisons like that, you’d better be prepared to back it up. — Possibility

Forget that I said anything at all.

Let's get down to business, shall we? Patterns are repetitions either of entities or processes:

1. Entity pattern: &, &, &,... [& is the entity being repeated]

2. Process pattern: 1, 2, 3,...[+1 is the proccess being repeated]


Now, @tim wood claims that patterns are mental (all in the head), we could even say it's projected onto the world (look up pareidolia) by our minds - I guess tim wood means to say we see what our minds want to see. However, that means there's no necessity for the world to behave in ways that correspond to the patterns we seem to discern in it unless tim wood wants to claim that our minds have some causal power over the world, able to make it do what we feel it should do (pattern), a preposterous claim, don't you think? I can, for example, imagine a pattern in the world, this pattern being (say) adding nitric acid to plants make it grow but me imagining that hypothetical pattern doesn't seem to make that pattern actual.

Pattern Recognition as the Essence of Philosophy

I'll take a quick early morning stab at this...

What is meant by the 'essence' of something?
The property needed to make it what it is.

What is philosophy?
A process of critical thinking. a way of thinking, with a view to a deeper understanding of life and our place in it. A study of fundamental questions posed which might help in more effective decision-making.
Involves: awareness or identification of a problematic issue; reflection and reasoning; responding by selecting best possible action, given current knowledge and experience. Consideration and evaluation of effects/results.

This kind of thinking process can be repeated as often as necessary.
We can begin to recognise patterns of thought.
Patterns which can be described as negative, positive or neutral.
Depending on circumstance and context.

A negative thinking pattern might be our 'usual' way of thinking *
Sometimes, we need help to see beyond our own patterns or those of society.
We can ask if our thoughts are helpful or harmful.
The essence of philosophy? Also, psychology, sociology - anything related to aspects of being human and making sense of the world.

We want to have the best or healthiest body/mind/spirit possible.
Knowledge is the key and power which enables this.
This, arguably, requires recognition of patterns and ways to think outside the box of patterns.
The aim is to survive - in a better way. Processing philosophically or otherwise.

--------
* https://thebestbrainpossible.com/negative-thinking-depression-mind/

Now, tim wood claims that patterns are mental (all in the head), we could even say it's projected onto the world (look up pareidolia) by our minds - I guess tim wood means to say we see what our minds want to see. However, that means there's no necessity for the world to behave in ways that correspond to the patterns we seem to discern in it unless tim wood wants to claim that our minds have some causal power over the world, able to make it do what we feel it should do (pattern), a preposterous claim, don't you think? I can, for example, imagine a pattern in the world, this pattern being (say) adding nitric acid to plants make it grow but me imagining that hypothetical pattern won't be actualized in the real world. — TheMadFool

I don’t think that’s what Tim IS saying, but I’ll let him clarify that one. Suffice to say, our minds determine predictions we make in relation to the world, and any relative regularities we perceive help us to construct patterns in our predictions, which inform our actions.

How do you think we perceive relative regularities in a process? How do we even consolidate a process at all? By constructing an abstract representation from a series of periodic observations in the past. So are we really seeing the pattern ‘out there’, or are we perceiving it in our mind and then attributing it to our predictions about the world?

Possibility Don't go Jordan Peterson on me — TheMadFool

:lol:

I don’t think that’s what Tim IS saying, but I’ll let him clarify that one. Suffice to say, our minds determine predictions we make in relation to the world, and any relative regularities we perceive construct patterns in our predictions, which inform our actions.

How do you think we perceive relative regularities in a process? How do we even consolidate a process at all? By constructing an abstract representation from a series of periodic observations in the past. So are we really seeing the pattern ‘out there’, or are we perceiving it in our mind and then attributing it to our predictions about the world? — Possibility

I'm happy, happy enough if you agree that patterns can be used to make predictions because that means you're testing the world to see if the pattern you abstracted is correct or not, correct in the sense whether your predictions come true or not. In effect you're acknowledging the existence of an "out there" in this.

Now, tim wood claims that patterns are mental (all in the head), we could even say it's projected onto the world (look up pareidolia) by our minds - I guess tim wood means to say we see what our minds want to see. — TheMadFool

If patterns are mental than @timwood must be a pattern..

I'm happy, happy enough if you agree that patterns can be used to make predictions because that means you're testing the world to see if the pattern you abstracted is correct or not, correct in the sense whether your predictions come true or not. In effect you're acknowledging the existence of an "out there" in this. — TheMadFool

Only in the sense that any information we receive is incomplete. Not testing the world - testing our predictive representations of the world. It’s not about whether my predictions ‘come true’ or not, but about whether they are useful in determining future interaction. Incorrect predictions can be just as useful as correct ones.

Only in the sense that any information we receive is incomplete. Not testing the world - testing our predictive representations of the world. It’s not about whether my predictions ‘come true’ or not, but about whether they are useful in determining future interaction. Incorrect predictions can be just as useful as correct ones. — Possibility

Jordan Peterson!

Okay - you’re going to have explain that.

Only in the sense that any information we receive is incomplete — Possibility

Now why is that?

The earth turns — tim wood

What are these turns made of?

Okay - you’re going to have explain that. — Possibility

No, I won't. :grin:

Amazing, isn’t it, how human intellect can’t get out of its own way?

How would it even be possible to discern, with apodeictic certainty, whether there are intrinsic patterns in Nature, or, there are occurrences in Nature that appear as intrinsically orderly to an intelligent observer?

Given that order is a relation between two things, what sense does it make to say order is intrinsic to two things, one of which is not an observer sufficiently intelligent enough to estimate it? It follows that it makes no difference whatsoever, and is therefore utterly meaningless, for there to be patterns as an intrinsic condition of the empirical domain, if there is no intelligence to which the pattern is comprehensible.

Ironic, though, that it takes an intelligence to determine that which constitutes a pattern, or an orderly occurrence of some kind, then declare there is no such thing as a pattern or orderly occurrence without him as a witness to it. In effect, he is both the author and the arbiter, over that of which he has absolutely no control.

(Sigh)

Given that order is a relation between two things, what sense does it make to say order is intrinsic to two things, one of which is not an observer sufficiently intelligent enough to estimate it? It follows that it makes no difference whatsoever, and is therefore utterly meaningless, for there to be patterns as an intrinsic condition of the empirical domain, if there is no intelligence to which the pattern is comprehensible. — Mww

A row is a relation between ducks, just as a beach is a relation between pebbles. They do not require the say so of a philosopher. But if, as you claim there is no relation between the post that I type, and the post that you read, then there is no possibility of any communication. Unless the pattern is maintained from my keyboard through many causal transformations to your screen, we are not even discussing. Irony of ironies, all is irony.

But let's get back on topic. How does pattern recognition happen? 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?

These are problems of cognitive science and information processing, not philosophical queries.

I'm tempted to suggest that you are imposing your own pattern on things here, but the children would get over-excited. :wink: I'm just reminding folks that there is a topic here, and it's not one of the far too many many Kant threads.

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 B with memory of A. Match! Pattern. No match! No pattern.

This morning I have eight replies in this topic. This a generic post to all. I'll try to make make specific replies in time.

Suppose you see four rocks on the ground. "Aha," you say, "a square!" Saying this because the rocks are so placed as to strongly suggest the shape of a square. A pattern, if you will. But where is the square? It's not on the ground; it's nothing of by or for the rocks. And the answer lies in the expression, "That looks like a square." You see the square; you provide the square; it's an idea, very like a template you placed over the rocks, that they seem to fit.

Since we're in the woods looking at rocks on the ground, a more complicated example: the path through the woods. Surely that's a pattern that's "out there." I argue not. Take you away and there is no path, and the path is nothing to the trees and mosses and ferns. But isn't there a reality that corresponds to the notion of the path, to the path itself? Of course there is! As an idea.

As a test of this idea of paths, next time you're in the woods, walk into the forest off the path until you cannot see it anymore. Then try to find it again. Not-so-easy, and it can be a little scary - or a lot scary. But what is happening? You're trying to find that part of the forest that fits your template, your idea, of a path.

No where in this is the pattern denied; there really is a path. But the path is an idea, such that without which idea, no path.

Well how about repetition? Same general argument. That happened yesterday and again today; it repeated. What, then, is the it? The thing that happened yesterday happened yesterday; it cannot nor ever will happen again. But something happened today that so reminded you of yesterday that you associate the two, the memory and the present event. The repetition an idea, because no repetition actually took place.

But pattern and repetition and the like are all real and useful - as ideas. "But the world corresponds to them!" is the cry. No, the world doesn't, not ever. Except of course as it seems to - but that is all a matter of mind. All the resemblances, repetitions, patterns, are abstractions from the world as a matter of idea by a mind. The efficacy of all of which a testimony to the power of mind.

But the world is that which enables our ideas, so that there must be something out there at least grounding the possibility for ideas, a consistency, a repeatability. In response to which claim, there seems to be, but are you quite sure? Because at close look, it isn't there.

:up:

Good question. What do you think they're made of? Just try to answer that without imposing an idea that does not and cannot correspond to the reality. But the ideas can come close, and be both poetically and mechanically efficient.

Explain the difference between hallucinations and patterns, pareidolia and non-pareidolia, and we have something to discuss.

The claim is ‘pattern recognition is the essence of philosophy’. — Wayfarer

Does not this come down to definitions and understandings? And thus without a determinate meaning without them, and only meaningful within them?

My own argument that patterns are ideas fits with this. If no ideas then no patterns, and certainly no philosophy, on the assumption that philosophy is about ideas.

And the claim itself seeming a generalization of Aristotelian topoi - the repertoire of how to regard things and relations between them for purposes of argumentation.

Reason can discern relationships, causes, principles and patterns. But not all of the former can be reduced to the latter. — Wayfarer

A provocative sentence, but the meaning escapes me. Perhaps an example would make it clear. Do you have one?

Given that order is a relation between two things, what sense does it make to say order is intrinsic to two things, one of which is not an observer sufficiently intelligent enough to estimate it? — Mww

I don't see where intelligence comes into it, unless the definition is very broad indeed. I would have thought something like sensitivity or responsiveness is enough. A tree grows into a gap where it receives more sunlight and away from an area permanently in shadow. There is something here, some relation between the tree and its environment generally, and between the tree and the sun, as a unique part of its environment, something quite predictable, a pattern, a kind of order. Are you inclined to ascribe this pattern to the tree's intelligence? Or to mine for noticing?

"But the world corresponds to them!" is the cry. No, the world doesn't, not ever. Except of course as it seems to - but that is all a matter of mind. All the resemblances, repetitions, patterns, are abstractions from the world as a matter of idea by a mind. The efficacy of all of which a testimony to the power of mind. — tim wood

And again, what does "mind" do here that sensitivity or responsiveness can't? A tree grows as it does because of the effect of sunlight on chlorophyll (or something like that), not sunlight in the entirety of its being, not each photon as a numerically distinct individual (if it is). Things respond to each other "abstractly", in the sense that only certain aspects are relevant, only certain aspects responded to. What matters is that when the thing does this or is this kind of thing, I do that. A tree is toppled by a boulder tumbling downhill in much the same way it's toppled by a car tumbling downhill; only the mass and rigidity of the object striking the tree is relevant. The color of the car is irrelevant. The exact mineral composition of the boulder is irrelevant. Abstraction, in this simple sense of selective sensitivity, is not a property only of mind.

it's not one of the far too many many Kant threads. — unenlightened

Sorry, I'll try to behave myself.

Btw, I'm still not clear on the thesis we're all ignoring

Because to recognise a pattern is to simplify, and it is the thing that science and philosophy and literature and music all lean towards; the making sense of complexity and its subsumption into a pattern. — unenlightened

if only because it seems more natural to me to think that everything works this way, so philosophy does too.

((Extra data point: Herbert Simon used to argue there's no such thing as intuition, only pattern recognition. A chess grandmaster seems, to the beginner, to have intuition because he has orders of magnitude more positions and patterns stored away and he recognizes them.))

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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?

Btw, I'm still not clear on the thesis we're all ignoring — Srap Tasmaner

I'm not clear either, but it is to do with this; that pattern recognition can be a human faculty or an enzyme's capacity. That it can be learned or it can be a way of learning. That it is intuitive, or it is a calculation. I may be wrong, and it can be that there is only an analogical connection between the various usages - that is what I would like to explore.