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Pattern Recognition Principle for a Theory of Mind
Gilberto de Paiva
Tuesday, 28 July 2009 01:19 UTC
Hello all,
I just finished and submited an article that proposes a theory of mind I developed based on the well known pattern recognition mechanism.
As this is a new idea in this forum I created this new topic.
The abstract is bellow:
“I propose that pattern recognition, memorization and processing are key concepts that can be a principle set for the theoretical modeling of the mind function. Most of the questions about the mind functioning can be answered by a descriptive modeling and definitions from these principles. An understandable consciousness definition can be drawn based on the assumption that a pattern recognition system can recognize its own patterns of activity. The principles, descriptive modeling and definitions can be a basis for theoretical and applied research on cognitive sciences, particularly at artificial intelligence studies.”
Link: http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.4509
Briefly, I’m proposing that the PATTERN RECOGNITION MECHANISM can be as important to understand the mind functionig as is the NATURAL SELECTION MECHANISM to understand the theory of evolution.
For me it is totaly clear that the mind is a pattern recognition and processing system as I describe in the article. I can understand and explain almost all the human mind, and also all the phylosophycal questions I was faced up with this theory. I would like to know your opinions about I’m proposing.
Thank you all, and I apologize for some gramatical errors I found later (I’ll try to fix them).
Gilberto de Paiva
Updated 28 July 2009 02:55 UTC
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Dear Gilberto,
You asked me: “What is a precise definition of the natural phenomenon of evaluation for you?”
I think the human mind is a very complex and complicated natural phenomenon and I would rather not address it. So do not expect a precise definition from my side.
Evaluation as I see it happens on many levels. Also before we would talk about the mind (again coming from an evolutionary perspective). A percept (and that is to say a pattern of information that is recognized) may be evaluated as potentially “nourishing” or not “dangerous” by an amoeba or a c. elegans or an aplysia.When we talk about the human mind and the complex psychology we have, it is very difficult to even know how many processes of evaluation may be involved because they are mostly happening unconsciously. Let alone how these multiple processes may fit into as larger picture.
Yours friendly
Hans -
Well Hans, I wondered why you didn’t complain when I talked about top-down attention in the implicit memory, if you are so sure that top down has to involve intention and volition, for there can’t be any intention before the ability to program the macro-language becomes possible.
Or perhaps you think of instinctive selection as being intention as well as Automaticity?
The ACC is common to a lot of different methods of Attention, and it is usually associated with Top-Down selection by suppression of alternates so that only one alternate is the resultant, which I explained was necceesary for the bottleneck to work. Bottom-up activation on the other hand is mostly the result of signals from other locations passing through the thalamus. If my model is correct, and you are welcome to attack it at the architectural level, or by showing how I have interpreted the architecture of the brain in the wrong manner, then Both Attention mechanisms are needed, and Intention and volition are not really practical until after the presence of Complicit Attention, so there must be about 4 or 5 different types of attention that use top-down selection that do not involve intention or volition. Your inability to see that these stages are necessarily part of the brains architecture, is one of the reasons I have questioned your naivette.
In the case of the Macro-Language, the Thalamus is triggered by the signals coming from the Cerebellum which promote multiple sequences of possible action/processing, and the ACC selects from among them, in much the same way it selects the functional cluster from the implicit memory, or the partial CHUNK of the Explicit Memory that allows it to detect memory elements during the Belt processing step.
As long as this is done directly no involvement of the prefrontal lobe is needed beyond the support for making the selection. However when sequences of Macros are linked together then the intention mechanism becomes required. At that point the SMA and the Ventro-lateral PFC become involved, and as a result automaticity expands from mere macro expansion to processing sequences of macros. If this is not what you mean by intention, then we are missing a piece of the puzzle either the instinctive selection mechanism needs a name, or the sequencing of macros needs another name. However I can see where you might be fooled into thinking that two such different processes are part of the same thing, if you assume some triviality of the Automatic processing because you are naive enough to think that Volition is the greater part, rather than the exception.
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Gilberto,
I’ll try one more time, (because I don’t think you understood my point earlier). I think I broadly agree with where you are trying to go – and that, properly identified, there is revolutionary potential here.
However, the brain is absolutely not a pattern recognition device. That has a precise and limited mathematical meaning. And the brain cannot conceptualise about and recognize objects – i.e. understand what a diversity of objects have in common – by identifying their common patterns. Because the great majority *don’t share common patterns." The forms of natural species – from rocks to chimpanzees to humans do not have common patterns in the strict mathematical/geometrical sense, if you look carefully.
It is much better, I suggest, to think of the brain as a plastic mapping device – which plastically maps objects/object images onto each other for the purpose of recognising & comparing their common shapes:
“a neurologist might conclude that God is a cartographer. He must have an inordinate fondness for maps, for everywhere you look in the brain maps abound” [and v. plastic maps but not patterns]
RamachandranSee Blakeslee’s “The Body has a mind of its own”
The objects of the world share common shapes – provided you think of those shapes v. plastically – but not, generally, common patterns. It is in the main technological objects that share common, artificially created, precise patterns.
So yes, I hypothesize that it may be possible and true to analyse all or most of human thought as based on plastic mapping – but definitely not patterns.
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Gilberto,
Just to further define: I believe it is much truer to say:
the brain is a typical shape recognition device (than “pattern ..”)… and to say that “the brain is a mapping device” is complementary – highlighting the means by which it recognises typical shapes.
All kinds of objects share typical shapes, but only a much smaller subset share patterns, (mainly geometrical, technological, and specially pattern-designed objects).
What exactly a typical shape is, and how the brain accomplishes the feat of recognizing one, is a matter for another time.
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Dear Graeme,
About the Godel’s theory implications, I really have to study it to discuss any further. If you know of someone that have works related to it, please tell me.
About your work, do you have a link to it for me to read more? Or if you could send me by email some text you have writen.
Thanks,
Gilberto -
Dear Hans,
I agree with you, and I have to say that I’m too enthusiastic. I organized and wrote my ideas only last month, so they are very fresh and exciting to me. So I have to control my enthusiasm a little.
But when I say to you (and others here) about a precise definition of some mind related concepts as evaluation or conciousness, I do not mean that I acctually have a precise in the sense of correctness. I mean I’m proposing precise in the sense that the definition is precise from its principle. So I’m looking for a clear precise definition, even if it may be simpler than the all real complexity of the concept or the phenomena.
And also if the definition principles are scientifically based, it would be preffereble. Last, some of physics theories started from simple precise defined models that were a oversimplification of the real physical phenomenum, this is the one way I think I can go on.
I will continue reading here and participating and discussing, but less enfatic as it was my start here. I think I need a pause for me to re-think and better work my ideas before discussing them more intensivelly.
You and others here helped me a lot.
Thank you very much Hans,
Gilberto
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Dear Graeme,
you wrote: “Well Hans, I wondered why you didn’t complain when I talked about top-down attention in the implicit memory, if you are so sure that top down has to involve intention and volition, for there can’t be any intention before the ability to program the macro-language becomes possible.”
I probably did not read that and that is no great mystery – I do hardly have any time for it at this time. I just can try to support the discussion by making a comment to one sentence here and there and obviously a critical comment is easier to write than an affirmative one.
Could it be that we are talking about two different concepts of “attention”?
The one I am interested in is psychological. E.g. the teacher says to the pupil: pay attention to what I am saying. Then the pupil tries to do that. That is where top-down attention is happening and clearly it involves intention and volition. The pupil may not succeed in following because very strong bottom-up processes pull his attention to another focus (what happens in “world of warcraft”, his pet, his first love etc.)
Maybe we discuss attention in a different thread?It is a huge topic!
Yours friendly
Hans -
Gilbert, I have to say that Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem is a classic, in fact his proof is so small as to be almost ridiculus Something like A=!A where ! is the negation symbol. I am only recently trying to build a body of work related to my model, so you can find some information about it, at My Userpage
Hans, as you may remember we do have a problem with the definition of Attention, I classify it as the regulatory method by which memory gets passed from one location to another within the brain. I believe I characterized it as Weak Attention versus Strong Attention in our discussion on attention. You are a proponent of Attention being related to concentration, and so we don’t see eye to eye. The main reason I follow the weak attention pattern, is that Dr. Laberges Triangular Circuit theory of Attention, is critical to about 5 or 6 different phases of attention that I recognize in my now 10 phase model of attention. Only two of those phases would even enter your vision, and I doubt that you would distinguish between the two.
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