A Patternist Philosophy of Mind

Chapter 3 A Patternist Philosophy of Mind 3.1 Introduction In the last chapter we discussed human intelligence from a fairly down-to-earth perspective, looking at the particular intelligent functions that human beings carry out in their everyday lives. And we strongly feel this practical perspective is important: Without this concreteness, it’s too easy for AGI research to get distracted by appealing (or frightening) abstractions of various sorts. However, it’s also important to look at the nature of mind and intelligence from a more general and conceptual perspective, to avoid falling into an approach that follows the particulars of human capability but ignores the deeper structures and dynamics of mind that ultimately allow human minds to be so capable. In this chapter we very briefly review some ideas from the patternist philosophy of mind, a general conceptual framework on intelligence which has been inspirational for many key aspects of the CogPrime design, and which has been ongoingly developed by one of the authors (Ben Goertzel) during the last two decades (in a series of publications beginning in 1991, most recently The Hidden Pattern |[Goe06al). Some of the ideas described are quite broad and conceptual, and are related to CogPrime only via serving as general inspirations; others are more concrete and technical, and are actually utilized within the design itself. CogPrime is an integrative design formed via the combination of a number of different philosophical, scientific and engineering ideas. The success or failure of the design doesn’t depend on any particular philosophical understanding of intelligence. In that sense, the more abstract notions presented in this chapter should be considered “optional” rather than critical in a CogPrime context. However, due to the core role patternism has played in the development of CogPrime, understanding a few things about general patternist philosophy will be helpful for understanding CogPrime, even for those readers who are not philosophically inclined. Those readers who are philosophically inclined, on the other hand, are urged to read The Hidden Pattern and then interpret the particulars of CogPrime in this light. 3.2 Some Patternist Principles The patternist philosophy of mind is a general approach to thinking about intelligent systems. It is based on the very simple premise that mind is made of pattern — and that a mind is a 35 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012951