On Tuesday 01 May 2007 14:06, Benjamin Goertzel wrote: > > In particular, emotions seem necessary (in humans) to a) provide goals, > > b) provide pre-programmed constraints (for when logical reasoning doesn't > > have enough information), and c) enforce urgency. > ... > So, IMO, it becomes a toss-up, whether to use the label "emotion" to > describe the emotion-analogues of an AI with transparent view into the > innards of its emotion-analogues... >
It's probably worth pointing out in this connection the Schachter-Singer two factor theory of emotion: that there is a cognitive factor and a physical arousal (and that the physical arousal is THE SAME for all emotions). In other words, physical arousal provides the urgency but just what it's urgent to do is determined by a cognitive process not significantly different from any other. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for people to mistake the arousal from one cause for emotional urgency for another, merely because both happen at the same time. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_factor_theory_of_emotion) Personally, I think that the use of the term emotion in AGI discussions clouds the issue. It is clearly not necessary for an AGI to have a physiological arousal that prepares the body for fight or flight. The role of arousal as a prioritizing mechanism is easily captured by any of a wide variety of well-understood heuristics used in operating systems. What the AGI then needs is *motivations*, which can flow in a straightforward way from explicit goal structures or from reinforcement learning. Josh ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
