Patterns in the Mind: Language and Human Nature (1993) by Ray Jackendoff is a captivating exploration of how people think and the patterns people use to express and share ideas. Many of the key concepts that Jackendoff analyzes overlap with those described by Marvin Minsky (Society of Mind, 1986) and Daniel Dennett (Consciousness Explained, 1991), and more recently, Anil Seth (Being You, 2021). In the poetic words of John Kabat-Zinn, each offers "a glimpse through one face of the multifaceted diamond ... related to each other by tiny rotations of the crystal". Their bottom line perhaps could be summarized:

• consciousness is built upon an invisible, unconscious scaffolding, not accessible to ordinary thought
• consciousness uses both innate (prefabricated, by natural selection) and learned (from social and individual experience) components
• consciousness (and its underpinning) optimizes sense-making and decision-making, across multiple conflicting simultaneous goals, using incomplete-noisy sensory data plus limited time and computational resources

Quite an awesome accomplishment for creatures evolved from simple chemicals over a few billion years!

Jackendoff begins with three "Fundamental Arguments" in Chapter 1 of Patterns in the Mind:

• The Argument for Mental Grammar: The expressive variety of language use implies that a language user’s brain contains a set of unconscious grammatical principles.
• The Argument for Innate Knowledge:The way children learn to talk implies that the human brain contains a genetically determined specialization for language.
• The Argument for the Construction of Experience: Our experience of the world is actively constructed by the unconscious principles that operate in the brain.

He expands and explains his "Fundamental Arguments" in the rest of the book, and applies them to music, sign-language, and mind itself. Fascinating!

_{(see also jan Telakoman's delightful video essay "Language Learning and Your Inner Horse and (Telakoman's recommendation) "Jackendoff is not crazy! (Or about phonology and consciousness)" by José-Luis Mendívil; and cf Thoughtful Metaphors (2000-11-08), Marvin Minsky Speaks (2004-03-25), Being You (2023-11-01), ...) - ^z - 2024-05-12}