Consciousness is Pattern Recognition

This is a nontechnical phenomenological proof that pattern-recognition and consciousness are the same activity, with some speculation about the importance of this. Since Husserl, many philosophers have accepted that consciousness consists of a stream of logical connections between an ego and external objects. These connections are called "intentions." Pattern recognition systems are achievable technical artifacts. The proof links a respected philosophical theory of consciousness with technical art, and may therefore enable a theoretically-grounded form of artificial intelligence called a "synthetic intentionality," a being able to synthesize, generalize, select and repeat a stream of intentions. If the pattern recognition is reflexive, able to operate on the stream of intentions, and flexible, able to find new types of connections, perhaps by evolutionary programming, an SI may be a particularly strong form of AI. The article then addresses some conventional problems: Searles' Chinese room, and how an SI could "understand" "meanings" and " be creative. " It seems to me that the central dispute concerning artificial intelligence is whether automata can be conscious. I'd like to describe the proof that persuaded me. I haven't seen it anywhere else, so as far as I know, it is original. Briefly, a philosophically respectable position is that consciousness is always consciousness… Of. Some. Thing. There is a substantial body of philosophy which studies the connection between a perceiver, and the object, i.e. the meaning of that critical little word "of." This body of philosophy is called phenomenology. Phenomenology is often defined as the study of experience. An indication that phenomenology may be relevant to AI is that by 1930, phenomenologists had uncovered the complexity of natural human intelligence. They recoiled in horror at the "vast field of toilsome discoveries" of which logic, mathematics and epistemology were small parts. 1 This is clearly parallel with more-modern experiences in practical AI. Edmund Husserl, who cast phenomenology in its modern terms, describes a consciousness as a stream of experience of the logical connections (or " intentions ") between an "ego" and other things. 2 His proof and evidence is widely respected by philosophers, and is beyond the scope of this paper. The intentions (connections between things and an ego) include things like perception, belief, observation, desire, communication and will. Note that all of these are described as "of," "with," "about" or "to." In people intentions seem to occur about 10 times per second. Husserl claims that consciousness consists of …