🚀 go-pugleaf

Brian Yamauchi wrote:
>> Once interesting idea is that emotions may be emergent phenomena of
>> the behaviors necessary for a system to survive in the real world.

Gilbert Harman replies:
>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 . . .
>   {certain emotions} are important and efficient gradations
>   in the scale of motivational states  . . .
>   . . .   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 feelings 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.
>    . . .
>   Within limits, emotions are
>   efficient, and feelings are necessary. (pp. 194-5)

I think Brian's question has an interesting aspect which should be
more directly addressed.  Scriven's example shows how useful emotional
*behavior* can be, making a strong case for robot designers to
satisfy themselves that their products include emotional behavior
patterns.

But do robot designers need to explicitly include emotions in the design,
or would it be sufficient to set rationality as the design goal?  If the
robot had built-in knowledge of human responses to curt answers, harsh
tones, etc., it could very well use those techniques to *manipulate* its
hearers.  In such a case, it would have emotional behavior without
emotional states.  Outside the robot might be ranting, but inside all
would be cool calculation.  Perhaps this design is more difficult to
implement than a robot without the talents of a con man, but let's for the
moment consider only the theoretical necessities.

Of course, simply engaging in agitated behavior indicates that the robot
is in an agitated state of some sort.  Proprioceptors could present this
state back to the robot, or ordinary sight and hearing might do so.  Does
this mean that the robot might *feel* emotional but not have actual
emotions?  Is that incoherent?  Perhaps it is incorrect to suppose that
rational motivation excludes emotional motivation.

Aaron Sloman writes:
> . . . the design requirements for resource-limited
>intelligent agents with multiple oft-changing sources of motivation
>in a complex and largely unpredictable world require mechanisms
>which INCIDENTALLY are capable of generating emotional states.
>
>FEELING emotions requires additional self-monitoring mechanisms.

Aaron is suggesting a different approach, more in line with Brian's
question.  If a behavioral state (with the internal states causally
antecedent to it) *can* constitute an emotional state, then the presence
of emotions is guranteed.  At least it will be in robots that act
emotional.  Dedicated proprioceptors may be required only for enhanced
performance in the regulation of emotive behavior.


Here's a suggestion of Aaron's that I especially like:

>But the excited anticipation of a deep mathematical discovery
>and the sorrowful disappointment at subsequent failure could
>occur in a pretty well disembodied intelligence, provided that
>it had the right sort of cognitive architecture.

Masochist that I am, I find myself attracted to the odd view that emotional
states are actually cognitive states.  (No offense to rational holders
of related views :-)  For example, happiness is the belief that one's
important preferences are being realized.  Sorrow is the reverse.

On this view, a largely isolated thinker have plenty of emotional states,
and experiences them by virtue of the same means by which it is aware of
its own beliefs!  Pretty slick.  Don't ask me how we (or robots) are
aware of our beliefs, though.  I vacillate between Wittgenstein and
Descartes.