🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3312@hub.UUCP> silber@voodoo.ucsb.edu writes:

 > It occurs to me, with respect to discussions about cognitive competence,
 > to reflect on the necessary role of emotional components in all aspects
 > of human cognition.  Perhaps a Von-Neumann strong-ai machine/program of
 > the traditional kind can never instantiate 'consciousness', not because
 > it is computationally incompetent, BUT because it is emotionally
 > incompetent????

It is my thesis that a learning system necessarily exhibits emotional
behavior.  As a scientist, I frequently experience the emotions of
curiosity, puzzlement, frustration, boredom, exhilaration, anxiety,
confidence, and satisfaction as I explore, ponder, get stuck, make
progress, develop understanding and gain insight into the systems that
I study.

It occurs to me that any learning system must experience such states,
and alter its goals and strategies accordingly.  Metaphorically
speaking, emotions are the first derivative of the learning curve:

	E = dK/dt   where E = Emotional State and K(t) = Knowledge.

I once wrote a pair of whimsical Socratic dialogues between a
pair of anthropomorphic self-programming computers to illustrate
this idea.  If you are interested, I would be happy to share
them with you.

I nice feature of this theory is that it tells me what to do
with my emotions:  Emotions tell me what I (and others) need to
learn next in life.

--Barry Kort