Pattern recognition may be considered both as a science and an art and every scientist in this field possesses such an art as well. It is better explained here. The scientist can read, recognize people, understand speech and learn new patterns every day. Moreover, in his work as a scientist in pattern recognition he uses the art of pattern recognition simultaneously as this skill is not just a general human ability, but moreover, it is indispensable for every scientist. This is different from many other fields, e.g. one can study painting without being a painter or study a disease without having the disease.
It was argued that because of this pattern recognition is related to consciousness: it is not possible to study consciousness without being conscious as an essential contribution to the study of the phenomenon is the internal experience of the phenomenon.
Scientific research may lead into models. These models mimic the processes under study. Implementations of these models may also be used, however, as tools to replace these processes. So, the science of pattern recognition may result in tools that can be used to assist or replace human recognition tasks. Some of these tools may be very dedicated, e.g. devices to recognize specific seismic events, security cameras that recognize faces or call centers that recognize speech. Other tools are more fundamental or general as they can be used to learn from data more generally. They are mainly the tools introduced and discussed on this website.
Filed under: Consciousness • Foundation
