Metaphysics solved.

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"deconstructs to"

"purpose" as in a teleological actor?

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Reply to Monitor Purpose as in recognition, danger avoidance, interest (pass to consciousness), and so forth, in order of complexity - any human desire or purpose, etc.

Reply to tim wood The stuff that the attributes apply to is part of the pattern as much as the attributes, or to put it another way, the attribute of encompassing a certain area of space is an attribute the same as any other. In other words, The thing includes all that. The pattern is equally in the physical world and in our brains at the same time. We have a representation of it guided by our desires.

The least a pattern can be is aesthetically pleasing. That's enough of a purpose to recognise it, but by the time you're aware, it's already had the purpose of danger potential applied to it. Purpose begins in the subconscious. You only become aware of a well-vetted sub-set of things that your nervous system experiences.

Reality, like my formulation of metaphysics, is infinitely simple and infinitely complex. It can be expressed in a few words but could be studied for a lifetime. I like to think of it as the infinitely recursive meta-mobius of existence. :)

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An attribute is a lower order thing used to compose higher order things.. A thing is a pattern with a purpose.

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Reply to tim wood The first purpose is recognition, In the case of stars, we say "That pattern is easily recognisable and that's useful because it moves certain ways that help us navigate." Then we relate it to an animal or something to keep it memorable and help us communicate it. That's a cultural thing more or less. Anyway, the second purpose is danger validation, which also happens pre-consciously. Only if something is dangerous or if it then passes the next set of subconscious filters which is interest validation toward other purposes, do we notice it consciously. Purpose/meaning is a human invention itself for human purposes. It describes wants of every kind whether practical or otherwise. It just happens that we've been figuring out how to do it for millions of years so we're really good at it. Nothing makes a pattern a thing but our purpose. It's not a thing otherwise - it's undifferentiated stuff, even though it's physically identical either way.

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Yes, they do, but what that means to them isn't relevant to what it means to us. Things aren't a priori and we don't know how the animal thought process differs from our own. Presumably it's identical to a point, but that isn't relevant in discussing what things are To Us, for our purposes.

The purpose comes first. You want to recognise things to avoid danger and approach pleasure, by whatever definitions. That means you need pattern recognition (which is also, roughly speaking, the definition of intelligence and our ability to sense and work with higher-order patterns is what separates us from the animals.)

The thing doesn't exist "for all intents and purposes" until it has a purpose. :)