Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!syma!aarons
From: aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk (Aaron Sloman)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Emotions (was Re: Simulating thinking is NOT like simulating flying)
Keywords: Strong AI, Weak AI, methodology, emotion
Message-ID: <2088@syma.sussex.ac.uk>
Date: 31 Jan 90 23:48:29 GMT
Organization: School of Cognitive & Computing Sciences, Sussex Univ. UK
Lines: 51

yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi) writes:

> Date: 28 Jan 90 20:06:49 GMT
> Reply-To: yamauchi@cs.rochester.edu (Brian Yamauchi)
> Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department

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

Yes. Monica Croucher and I argued to this effect in our paper
Aaron Sloman and Monica Croucher
`Why robots will have emotions', in
 Proceedings 7th International Joint Conference on Artificial
 Intelligence, Vancouver, 1981.

I elaborated the argument a little in

Aaron Sloman
`Motives Mechanisms Emotions' in
    Emotion and Cognition
    1,3, pp.217-234
    1987,
to be reprinted in M.A. Boden (ed)
    The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
    "Oxford Readings in Philosophy" Series
    Oxford University Press, 1990.
    (Soon to be published)

The key idea, to be found earlier in the writings of H.A. Simon (see
his collection entitled Models of Mind), and no doubt others before
him, is that 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.

Having or feeling a full range of characteristically HUMAN emotions
with all their normal qualities (including things like nausea, being
startled, etc.) would also require either similar physiology or
simulated physiological feedback loops.

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. (I regard all
this stuff about symbol grounding as largely a red herring. Causal
embedding in a physical environment is relevant only to a sub-set of
the huge space of possible designs for intelligent mechanisms.)

Aaron