Thinking in Patterns and the Pattern of Human Thought as Contrasted with AI Data Processing
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Department of Physics, University of Toronto, 60 St. George, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, Canada
2
Book and Media Studies, University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, 60 St. George, Toronto, ON M5S 1A7, Canada
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Information 2018, 9(4), 83; https://doi.org/10.3390/info9040083
Received: 5 March 2018
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Revised: 4 April 2018
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Accepted: 5 April 2018
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Published: 8 April 2018
(This article belongs to the Special Issue AI AND THE SINGULARITY: A FALLACY OR A GREAT OPPORTUNITY?)
We propose that the ability of humans to identify and create patterns led to the unique aspects of human cognition and culture as a complex emergent dynamic system consisting of the following human traits: patterning, social organization beyond that of the nuclear family that emerged with the control of fire, rudimentary set theory or categorization and spoken language that co-emerged, the ability to deal with information overload, conceptualization, imagination, abductive reasoning, invention, art, religion, mathematics and science. These traits are interrelated as they all involve the ability to flexibly manipulate information from our environments via pattern restructuring. We argue that the human mind is the emergent product of a shift from external percept-based processing to a concept and language-based form of cognition based on patterning. In this article, we describe the evolution of human cognition and culture, describing the unique patterns of human thought and how we, humans, think in terms of patterns.
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Keywords:
patterns; patterning; cognition; set theory; language; information; abductive reasoning
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MDPI and ACS Style
Logan, R.K.; Tandoc, M. Thinking in Patterns and the Pattern of Human Thought as Contrasted with AI Data Processing. Information 2018, 9, 83. https://doi.org/10.3390/info9040083
AMA Style
Logan RK, Tandoc M. Thinking in Patterns and the Pattern of Human Thought as Contrasted with AI Data Processing. Information. 2018; 9(4):83. https://doi.org/10.3390/info9040083
Chicago/Turabian StyleLogan, Robert K., and Marlie Tandoc. 2018. "Thinking in Patterns and the Pattern of Human Thought as Contrasted with AI Data Processing" Information 9, no. 4: 83. https://doi.org/10.3390/info9040083
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