Patterns, Language, and Knowledge
[by J. Scott Shipman]
John Boyd’s work led me to zenpundit a few years ago, and I am flattered and grateful to be small part of such an intellectually stimulating community.
One Boydian theme that has driven my reading is the “observe” node of his OODA (observe, orient, decide, act). While “orientation” gets most of the attention in Boydian circles, I have come to consider “observe” to be the foundation of knowledge, thus action. “What” we see, or as my friend Dr. Terry Barnhart points out, what we “sense” directs orientations, decisions, and actions.
This short post is something of a preview (and an opportunity to try-out WordPress which does not like Safari—I’m using an old laptop that is slower than slow). I’d like to share four books that have influenced my thinking and I plan to review the first two of them here in the coming weeks.
Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition, A Theory of Judgment, by Howard Margolis
Margolis’ thesis is “thinking and judgment…everything is reduced to pattern recognition.” Accordingly, he offers what he calls a P’ Cognition spiral, where the “spirals” represent a cognitive cycle and at the tops of the cycles represent a pattern recognition process. A review is in the works.
Language and Human Behavior, by Derek Bickerton Bickerton’s thesis is that “human cognition came out of language.” In this work, he defines language, explains the connection of language and evolution, and how language is integral to intelligence and consciousness. A review is in the works.
The final two books are Personal Knowledge: Towards a Post-Critical Philosophy, and Meaning, by Michael Polanyi
“We know more than we can tell.” Michael Polanyi
There are several points of intersection between Polanyi’s work and that of Margolis and Bickerton, but what I found interesting were Polanyi’s treatment of what he refers to as two types of awareness; subsidiary and focal awareness. In Personal Knowledge, he offers an example of driving a nail, “I have a subsidiary awareness [also called from awareness in Meaning] of the feeling in the palm of my hand which is merged into my focal awareness of my driving the nail.” Subsidiary and focal awareness, according to Polanyi, are mutually exclusive where if one diverts one’s attention to the “feeling in the palm” one is likely to miss the nail. Musicians will recognize the distinction of “looking” at one’s hands will almost always divert from the music on the sheet.In Meaning, Polanyi goes further and assembles what he calls “three centers of tacit knowledge: first, the subsidiary particulars; second, the focal target; and third the knower who links the first to the second. We can place these three things in the three corners of a triangle. Or we can think of them as forming a triad, controlled by a person, the knower, who causes the subsidiaries to bear on the focus of his attention.”
Synthesis: I believe these ideas connect. For if Margolis is correct, then the “awareness” expressed by Polanyi would be apprehended using pattern recognition; recognition of patterns using Bickerton’s ideas with respect to language. Language is pattern-based, and we use language patterns in sense-making/creation of meaning.
More to come.
June 6th, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Scott interesting post. My thoughts: I see observation as sensing yourself and the world around you. Onces whole body must act as his eyes and ears. Pattern recognition is based on experiences which condition our senses. Conditioning the senses, all 6 of them (including intuition) comes through experience or lessons learned from experience. This heightens our awareness towards patterns of behavior and hence anomolies i.e day is from night, sad/happy, angry/joy, safety/danger, cooperative/uncooperative etc. When we create and nurture the abilty to see and recognize patterns (and it does take work, to develop these skills) then we are able to orient to the important indicators or factors to focus, decide and act on. Does this simplistic interpetation make any sense?
Great post Scott, glad to see you here at Zenpundit, blogging. Readers will think more, and learn much from your efforts.
June 6th, 2011 at 2:30 pm
Fred, You make perfect sense. When I’ve written the review for the Margolis book, I’ll deal with the "does take work" line of thought. In a conversation with Terry Barnhart a couple months ago we discussed "stressors"—necessary because our brains are evolved to be efficient (read: lazy), so we have to "stress" our brains to build new patterns. Many thanks!
June 6th, 2011 at 5:36 pm
It’s good to see you blogging here, Scott — and by a pleasant coincidence, the first of the book covers you posted happens to show the (alleged) "face of Christ in the snow" image that I’ve been searching for, without success, for a post on apophenia and pareidola, a recurrent interest of mine that surfaced most recently when the face of Osama bin Laden popped up out of a British toaster…
Welcome, and thanks for the book-pointers!
June 6th, 2011 at 6:46 pm
Hi Charles, I have wondered about the significance of the illustration. If it is any help is from, The Anatomy of Judgement, by ML Johnson Abercrombie (published in 1960 by Hutchinson Limited), after a puzzle picture in the American Journal of Psychology 67 (1954), I do look forward to your post. Many thanks for your kind words!
June 7th, 2011 at 1:51 pm
Scott, I’m delighted to see you blogging here! Do you agree with Margolis’ central thesis? It would seem to me that not everything in reality can be reduced to patterns even though the human mind would like it to be that way. We, as humans, constantly look for patterns and in some spheres of life there are no patterns which leads us into believing in "false patterns". Claiming to observe a pattern, when really it’s a "false pattern" can be, in my opinion, incredibly dangerous.
June 7th, 2011 at 6:44 pm
Hi Greg, Many thanks for the kind words. I believe it is more synthesis of Margolis and Bickerton, than Margolis alone. Bickerton makes a pretty compelling case for language being the seat of cognition. I’ve been working on a model variation which combines Margolis’ P-cognition spiral, which appeals to me because of the "feed-forward" phenomena [cognitively, there is no going back–once you hear a joke/solve a puzzle, you can’t unlearn, etc.] and NNTs ladder idea. I know he owns the anti-fragile moniker, but I believe there is potential for a combination of Margolis’ "ladder of cognition" which I’ll cover in the review, where I would stipulate the inherent patterns are language dependent and that language is on the robust to antifragile side of the curve, therefore, convex, but probably multidimensional. Before I do this, I plan to re-read Polanyi’s chapter on Articulation in PK; I’m not wedded to a perfect synthesis between these three, and I’m admittedly groping. False patterns are everywhere, part of life, can’t avoid them—the old saw, to err is human implies the imperfection of our patterns of cognition. I know you’re familiar with NNTs work, so if you think this nutty, fire at will:)) Many thanks for the thoughtful comment, and I hope I answered your question.
June 7th, 2011 at 8:23 pm
It’s a neat conversation you’ve stirred up here, Scott.
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One quick comment: some patterns may be both false and misleading, others may be both accurate and helpful — but there’s a third possibility, that a "false" pattern may nonetheless yield useful or creative insight (as with a Rorschach test, or Leonardo’s use of fungal formations on walls)…
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A fascinating business, pattern recognition… and one that will eventually give us a handle on conflict resolution too, I suspect.
June 7th, 2011 at 8:48 pm
Hi Charles, Many thanks!
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I took a few minutes this afternoon and was reading Umberto Eco’s Kant and the Platypus, Essays On Language and Cognition. I’ve been monkeying around with this for some time—just picking it and reading random sections. Eco wrote of Marco Polo’s unicorn, and referenced/quoted his "The Description of the World." Eco says, "often when faced with an unknown phenomenon, we react by approximation; we seek that scrap of content, already present in our encyclopedia, which for better or worse seems to account for the new fact." He goes on to describe how Polo dealt with something he’d never seen; namely, a rhinoceros. Eco says, "Although he had never seen such animals before, by analogy with other known animals he was able to distinguish the body, the four feet, and the horn. Since his culture provided him with the notion of a unicorn—a quadruped with a horn on its forehead, to be precise—he designated those animals as unicorns." Eco goes on recounting how Polo described the unicorns as "strange—not very good examples of the species…" I thought of Greg’s question when I read this, and your comment brought it back to mind—in this case, a "false pattern" in the hands of someone relying on what his culture had told him, followed blindly—whereas with a little more curiosity he may have drawn a different conclusion. Eco went on to speculate how Polo would have reacted if he’d landed in Australia and seen a duck-billed platypus; with no pattern of reference….
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I suspect you are right in your conclusion; this pattern thing is pretty good stuff.
June 8th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
Scott,
Like all the above, really glad to see you here.
As a somewhat humorous aspect of "patterns" and "observation," a short story on the "Battle of Midway." My first boss had been a backseater in a Dauntless in Bombing Six on the Enterprise that 4 June day. I told him – in 1969, at 23, I was barely not an Ensign anymore – I didn’t know anyone so old, where was his cane – what was it like anyway to be at Midway? His comment: "Hell, I can’t say, I was 19 and I saw the whole thing backwards." When he retired, I showed the Victory at Sea segment on Midway backwards:) Pat was mentioned several times in Walter Lord’s history Incredible Victory.
I found it interesting that Charles didn’t mention the 4th possiblity that one could assess a situation generally correctly, BUT then go on to make bad decisions. Fred and I have debated this under the context of good situational awareness (SA) but flawed orientation. Most consider them one and the same and I would agree for many situations but not all. The content is observed, but the recognition of the pattern is flawed.
Dr. Fadi Esmaeel, former IDF surgeon, experienced terrorism attack responder, and lecturer/teacher on terrorism and homeland security emphasizes this point when he teaches in California in regard to both terrorism and medical process post attack. His point to the doctors is that "warfare" type treatment is significantly different than say for car crash victims.
To close the loop, I remain intrigued by the Battle of Midway based on my friend Pat’s stories, my own career in the attack side of Naval aviation, and because the more I read, the more I realize it is a battle that keeps on giving. While some may discount the OODA loop as the way we make decisions, looking at 4-7 June 1942 with O,O,D,A as your analysis tools is a information rich environment. Japanese and U.S. Navy carrier operations were not as similar as most believe. And despite Japanese experience in attacking from carriers for some time, this was only the second time for carrier vs. carrier war. There are "patterns" here worth thinking about in regard to decision making in crisis and in how to respond when information is less than desired.
I look forward to reading your future effort.
June 8th, 2011 at 6:56 pm
Hi Ed,
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Many thanks!
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Your comments related to the doctor are important. Dr. Jerome Groopman wrote an excellent book called, How Doctors Think (read it a couple years ago after someone attending my To Be or To DO talk heard me talking about Boyd’s analysis/synthesis idea in D&C). One of the best stories relates the experience of a doctor on the West coast who is a premier pediatric oncologist—however, she didn’t start out that way. In the beginning she followed the Bayesian models taught in med schools (most doctors follow this statistical methodology in diagnosis). Early in her career, a patient died when the diagnostic model didn’t fit the illness. The doctor learned the lesson and went on to become one of the leading minds in her field. Groopman asked her "secret," and she replied it was very simple, "Ask; what else could it be?" From a pattern perspective, this delimiting rhetorical device frees the mind for alternatives that may be missed using a traditional diagnostic model.
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Also, Greg Berns’ in Iconoclast, reports that iconoclasts are different because they aren’t satisfied with the traditional "view"—as it were.
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When I start writing the review on the Margolis book, I plan to include Margolis’ "belief matrix" where he deals with knowledge, contrary knowledge, doubt, uncertainty, and paradox (where paradox is a situation or proposition that seems to be absurd or contradicting, but may be true). Margolis allows that "uncertainty" can also be consider a puzzle.
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Good to see you here!
June 8th, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Ed:
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Good point re the 4th possibility — my focus was artistic rather than strategic, but of course you’re right.
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Scott:
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I too look forward to your continuing posts here — and to your account of Margolis’ "belief matrix" in particular. It sounds as though it fits nicely with some readings I’ve been doing in Buddhist Madhyamika philosophy…
June 8th, 2011 at 8:55 pm
The potential energy of the loop is built in observation and slowly (or not) released throughout the loop until it jumps the gap between decision and action. The kinetic energy is released as a spark in revolution, or a slow burn in evolution, depending on what fills the gap. The potential is totally released in Action as it penetrates, isolates, subverts, re-orients, and reharmonizes itself into another potential.
June 8th, 2011 at 10:07 pm
Hi Charles,
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I drew a replica of the matrix in the book, and will send along via email. Not sure if it would be appropriate to post.
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Hi Larry, Thanks for your almost palpable description. One of many challenges to the pattern cognition question is the multiplicity of physical locations in the brain which contribute to single idea; Margolis nor Bickerton relied on neuroscience in the development of their ideas—Margolis avoided intentionally, if memory serves (his is a more philosophical approach).
June 12th, 2012 at 2:33 am
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June 12th, 2012 at 8:26 pm
‘ Bickerton’s thesis is that “human cognition came out of language.” In this work, he defines language, explains the connection of language and evolution, and how language is integral to intelligence and consciousness. ‘
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I hope he cites Nietzsche!
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True, not necessarily a direct correlation, but Nietzsche’s guess on the origin of consciousness, combined with his assessment of language, sounds similar. I quoted a chunk of one passage at the beginning of this post: http://curtisgaleweeks.typepad.com/blog/2011/08/look-awayif-you-can.html
June 13th, 2012 at 3:21 pm
Hi Curtis,
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Not bad for a year old post. Bickerton does not cite Nietzsche, but thanks for sharing your post. If you haven’t, check out Critt Jarvis’ blog these days.