X-Message-Number: 12621 From: "Scott Badger" <> References: <> Subject: Re: More on Intelligence, Emotions, and Values Date: Sat, 23 Oct 1999 11:12:21 -0500 Hi everyone, As I mentioned earlier, psychologists have identified two major emotional factors: Positive Affect and Negative Affect. I thought I might offer a bit more on this topic and hope I don't come across as excessively pedantic. Much of it, I admit, is Psych 101, but perhaps some of you may enjoy going over these concepts again. It's been suggested that there are at least six primary emotions which can be identified by facial expressions in infants and appear to be innate regardless of the culture in which they are observed. 1. Joy-Happiness-Pleasure 2. Fear 3. Anger-Excitement 4. Interest-Surprise 5. Sadness-Distress 6. Disgust I'll bet you can see these infants' facial expressions in your mind as you read through that list. Our affective experiences are mediated by the older paleo-mammalian component of our brains which contain the Limbic System. All of these emotions have been evoked by electrically stimulating specific locations in this middle brain region. A button is pushed and a charging bull stops in his tracks because the Fear center is stimulated. Rats become neurotic pressing the lever that stimulates the pleasure center. I suspect these physiological reactions developed as innate responses that served as "natural incentives" to enhance survival. But are there true biochemical differences between these affective states? Experiments have been conducted where one group of individuals were given a shot of adrenaline and told that it would make them feel happy, silly, and somewhat high. The other group was told that it would make them feel unusually irritable and angry. The first group was placed among others who were joking around and being quite pleasant while the second group was placed among others that were instructed to complain, whine, and be generally annoying. As predicted, the context and the expectations determined the interpretation of the aroused state. IOW, the first group reported positive affect and the second group reported negative affect. Other researchers disagree that all states of arousal are identical. They recognize that adrenaline is a common biochemical component in most emotional states, but they have identified certain hormonal distinctions between emotions. For example, Anger/Excitement is characterized by higher levels of sex hormones while Fear is characterized by lower levels. Even so, I do not doubt that humans engage in a significant amount of cognitive interpretation based on past experiences, expectations, and context. This arrangement places us at considerable risk for making poor decisions. Especially those who express the desire to "go with their gut". Cognitive distortions and irrational beliefs can easily lead to faulty interpretations of emotional states. I've noted that the word, "feel" is bandied about and broadly misused by the public. "I feel hungry." tells us that you sense hunger. It does not reflect an emotion. Hunger is a primary drive and we are motivated to eat by a number of signals other than the basic body signals (e.g. low levels of blood sugar). Hunger deprivation and satiation can certainly facilitate emotional states, however. Many people often equate and confuse the terms "desire" with "emotion". These strike me as separate but related notions. "I feel like an ice cream cone" does not reflect an emotion. It reflects a desire . . . a goal. The motivation to seek out the ice cream cone is derived from previous positive affective reactions to eating ice cream cones. Now just a bit more on the concept of motivation. Clearly there are physiological motivators, but motivators may also be psychological in nature. Traditionally, psychology has identified four important motive systems: 1. The Achievement Motive 2. The Power Motive 3. The Affiliative Motive 4. The Avoidance Motive (fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success, etc) But getting back to the question in this discussion which interested me . . . Is it possible to have intelligence without emotional states? My response is that I think it is possible (though let me reiterate, I am quite ignorant in the field of AI). Still, I can conceive of an intelligent entity with powerful decision-making algorithms choosing from alternative goals and alternative plans of action, without the need for previous affective experiences or affective reactions to outcomes. For decision-making to improve over time, valences would have to be assigned to expected and actual outcomes. To my way of thinking, assigning values like this to outcomes is not equivalent to feeling an emotion, but it would be sufficient to intelligently operate in and interact with the world. In summary, robots don't need hormones. And maybe someday technology will render the Limbic System completely vestigial, and we won't need emotions to motivate us, or to help us remember things, or to guide our decision-making. And we'll be purely cognitive creatures. But the crux of the argument for me is that that entity is not going to be human, per se, and I kinda like being human for the most part. So I would prefer that emotional responses be very accurately simulated if I were to be uploaded. But I would also want to have the ability to regulate those emotional states with far greater control than we currently have. Although, if my consciousness were stored artificially, I'm not sure what use I would have for negative affect. Someone wrote: >>As compared to a computer that is programmed to monitor its internal and external environment and always make positive adjustments (or least logically likely to be positively corrective), humans may also do the same. But often or just as likely, a human will take action to worsen the bad feelings ( ignore it, do drugs, irrationally attack another, self destruct)or celebrate the good feelings like having a party or laughing or buying flowers or taking a day off from work. Computers do none of these things.<< It sounds like you're saying that we make bad decisions on purpose (e.g. suicide, hurting others, etc.). I question that notion. I think we do things because we believe *on some level* that there's something in it for us. All behavior has a perceived payoff, even if that perception is unconscious and not evident to us or others. This happens because we endorse irrational beliefs which are most frequently based on several, very common, informal logical fallacies. These irrational beliefs are unconscious for the most part. Consequently, positive and negative valences may be incorrectly applied to internally and externally produced events. Some people call this "emotional tagging". The Avoidance Motive, mentioned earlier, is also responsible for many of the self-defeating behaviors that we engage in. By now many of you are asking yourselves, "What motivated Badger to write this long-winded post?" The answer is, "Because I felt like it!" Best regards, Scott Badger Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12621