On 12 February 2015 at 22:50, Bruno Marchal <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Emotion provides an efficacious way to retrieve self-satisfaction, by > bypassing reason, which would be too much slow. > We are "programmed" (by evolution, perhaps) to dislike anything > threatening our satisfaction. That is why a burn is painful, and a good > meal is pleasant. So we are driving by good and bad. We tend to get the > good, and to be away from the bad. That are the basic emotion at the heart > of all our behaviors. Now, we have evolved into very complex relationships > with nature and with ourselves, and the emotions can become complex and > conflictual, notably with conflicts between shorterm goal (I want the > pleasure of smoking a cigarette) and longterm goal (I don't want to die > from a painful disease related to the cigarette). > > If Mars Rover has enough self-reference, a conflict between different > subgoal can happen, like I want to go there quickly, but I hesitate to take > the shorter path as it is near a dangerous crevasse. In such case, it might > behave (at least) like it has emotions: hesitation, failed attempts in > quick succession, etc. > > Emotions are daughter of the qualia of pain and pleasure, related to > self-satisfaction and survival. You will put your hand oout of the fire > more quickly than after reasoning that it could harm you, but with a lesson > well memorized, like : fire hurts, not do that again, ... > > It sounds to me as though in order to be motivated to act, you need some sort of stimulus (eg pain, pleasure) and you would think that therefore you need to be aware of that stimulus. But I guess some simple systems do this by reflex (insects, rovers, pulling hand from fire before the pain registers consciously). So maybe you don't need to be conscious to be motivated, in a simple sense. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
