Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!bu.edu!att!linac!uwm.edu!ogicse!pdxgate!eecs!erich From: erich@eecs.cs.pdx.edu (Erich Stefan Boleyn) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Emergent Properties Keywords: emergence consciousness computability Message-ID: <572@pdxgate.UUCP> Date: 6 Nov 90 18:36:14 GMT References: <1265@ucl-cs.uucp> <692@creatures.cs.vt.edu> Sender: news@pdxgate.UUCP Lines: 24 holliday@csgrad.cs.vt.edu (Glenn Holliday) writes: >2. Emotional life: Our firmware, hormoneware and thought processes are at > their most entangled when emotional experiences emerge. I have great > difficulty imagining how computational processes are going to give rise > to the actual experience of emotion. I don't think it's as horribly complex as you say. It is extremely *specific* in its underlying structure, but that may come with time. I think the main reason that we are so easily confused by our emotions is a lack of direct connection to our "modeling centers". We produce inner models of everything we work with, even ourselves, and so produce an artificial model of our own emotional states. This creates a feedback loop (since we can surely modify our own emotions at times) that tries to push them toward our *expectations*, and you can guess what happens then... *chaos*, heh heh. (seriously, though, I *do* think it causes confusion) Erich / Erich Stefan Boleyn Internet E-mail: \ >--={ Portland State University Honorary Graduate Student (Math) }=--< \ College of Liberal Arts & Sciences *Mad Genius wanna-be* / "I haven't lost my mind; I know exactly where I left it."