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It's
true that nearly all thoughts have some physiological/primordial-brain
associations, but in some cases (the ones we call "emotions") these associations
are the DOMINANT part of the thought/experience, whereas in other cases they're
only a minor aspect...
It is
interesting if Tibetans don't make the distinction between thought and emotion
so crisply as we do. Of course, I'm sure there are many things they
distinguish that we don't habitually distinguish, as well. Different
cultural systems divide up the world in different ways, as we all
know...
-- Ben
G
I'll add one last point here..the Dalai Lama,
when talking with western intelligenicia from various disciplines at Harvard (
I think it was Harvard) was asked a question about emotions. He got a
very puzzled look on his face. It turned out that the Tibetans, due to
their study of the mind, made no distinction between ordinary thought and
emotion. So the idea of "emotion" being separate from thought was
completely foreign to HHDL..
My own experience tells me that *all* thoughts carry a
physiolocial component..there is no separation between the body and mind in
this sense. It's just that most thoughts affect on our physiology flies
under the radar of our everyday awareness...So we only really notice the major
emotions/thoughts due to this kind of numbness. But the accumulation of
physiological responses from subtle negative thinking can have a very
profoundly bad effect on us over time...I think an AGI will also need to watch
these subtle accumulations..
--Kevin
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2004 5:36
PM
Subject: RE: [agi] AGI's and
emotions
Folks interested in this thread should check out the draft of Marvin
Minsky's upcoming book "The Emotion Machine". Been available at his web site
for quite some time:
The central idea is that emotion is not
different from thinking. Instead, each emotion is a type or arrangement of
thinking. There is no such thing as unemotional thinking, because there
always must be a selection of goals, and a selection of resources for
achieving them.
From my notes after skimming some of the book about a year ago,
it seemed that Minsky sees emotions as kinds of "presets" (his term -
"Selectors") that determine what mind resources and goals are active at a
given time to solve a particular "problem". [I seem to recall Antonio
Damasio also had a similar conception... and he called the emotional "set
points" PATTERNS!]
The following is from the draft of Chapter 1 Section
6:
Each
of our major emotional states results from �switching� the set of resources
in use�by turning certain ones on and other ones
off. Any such
change will affect how we think, by changing our brain�s
activities.
In other
words, our emotional states are not separate and distinct from thoughts;
instead, each one is a different way to think.
![]()
For example, when an emotion
like Anger �takes over,� you
abandon some of your ways to make plans. You turn off some safety-defenses.
You replace some of your slower-acting resources with ones that tend to more
quickly react�and to do with more speed and strength. You trade empathy for
hostility, change cautiousness into aggressiveness, and give less thought to
the consequences. And then it may seem (to both you and your friends) that
you�ve switched to a new personality.
Good stuff! (IMHO)
J.
W. Johnston
Agreed --- we tend to project even abstract experiences back down
to our physical layer, and then react to them physically ... a kind of
analogy that AGI's are unlikely to pursue so avidly unless specifically
designed to do so
ben g
> Emotions ARE thoughts but they differ from
most thoughts in the extent
> to which they involve the "primordial"
brain AND the non-neural
> physiology of the body as well.
I guess
we call emotions 'feelings' because we feel them - ie. we can
feel the effect they trigger in our whole body, detected via our
internal monitoring of physical body condition.
Given
this, unless AGIs are also programmed for thoughts or goal satisfactions
to trigger 'physical' and/or other forms of systemic reaction, I suppose
their emotions will have a lot less 'feeling' depth to them than humans
and other biological species experience.
Cheers,
Philip
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