🚀 go-pugleaf

Michael Scriven discusses why well designed androids would
have to have feelings and emotions in PRIMARY PHILOSOPHY
(McGraw Hill, 1966), pp. 181-197.  The robot
must be able to respond to emergencies, for example, and at
such times will

   be short with people for his time, and if they persist,
   he will be shorter, indeed rude.  And what will his
   reaction be to further interference when he has already
   made his preoccupation plain?  It will be irritation,
   annoyance, and eventually a justified anger, because all
   these are important and efficient gradations in the scale
   of motivational states in which decreasing courtesy is
   appropriate.  Whatever the mechanisms in the android,
   however different from the human being he may be in
   constitution, he must have inner states corresponding to
   these stages of disregard for the finer fellings of
   others that are justified by emergency plus
   thoughtlessness, and he must know that he has them and be
   able to recognize them even if they build up when he does
   not intend that they should.  What he does not have to
   have is an uncontrollable temper or an overirritable or
   overlethargic disposition.  For many purposes, he might
   not even need anger, the limit case on the scale of
   defensible reaction states.  But if the android is a
   close match to human beings in its powers, it will need
   to conserve the additional resources released by deep
   emotions, having them triggered only by especially
   threatening circumstances.  Within limits, emotions are
   efficient, and feelings are necessary. (pp. 194-5)

--
		       Gilbert Harman
                       Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory
	               221 Nassau Street, Princeton, NJ 08542
			      
		       ghh@princeton.edu
		       HARMAN@PUCC.BITNET