Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!think.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!munnari.oz.au!yoyo.aarnet.edu.au!sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au!jbaxter From: jbaxter@physics.adelaide.edu.au (Jon Baxter) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: Conciousness Message-ID: <3193@sirius.ucs.adelaide.edu.au> Date: 6 May 91 06:21:55 GMT Article-I.D.: sirius.3193 References: <2102@seti.inria.fr> <2124@seti.inria.fr> <11611@uwm.edu> <74193@eerie.acsu.Buffalo.EDU> <24592@well.sf.ca.us> Sender: news@ucs.adelaide.edu.au Reply-To: jbaxter@adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au.oz.au (Jon Baxter) Organization: Department of Physics, University of Adelaide, South Australia Lines: 34 Nntp-Posting-Host: adelphi.physics.adelaide.edu.au In article <24592@well.sf.ca.us> nagle@well.sf.ca.us (John Nagle) writes: > > It's quite useful for even rather simple robots to have a pain system. > Pain and fear are fundamental mechanisms for improving the odds of survival. > Nor is it necessary that something be intelligent to have emotions. > > Emotions evolved to meet some need. They're part of a control > system. Understanding how simple emotions work in animals, and emulating > it in both robots and animations, appears a fruitful area for research. > > John Nagle Here you are talking about emotions from a third person viewpoint: as part of a control system governing an animal's behaviour. But of course we know that emotions have a first-person aspect, namely their subjective content. The big philosophical question that needs to be answered is whether reproduction of third-person attributes of emotions is enough to generate the first-person attributes. For example, if I build a robot that behaves in a fearful manner, will it necesarily subjectively experience fear? I can imagine scenarios in which the answer to this question is "no". For instance, the robot's actions may simply be determined by a gigantic look-up table, with entries of the form {current-state -> action}. In such a case fearful actions and fearless actions would be produced by effectively identical inner functioning, and so one would not expect the robot to have the subjective experience ordinarily associated with "fear". So what is needed to produce the subjective attributes, and why? Jon Baxter. -- Dave Chalmers (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu) Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University. "It is not the least charm of a theory that it is refutable."