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rfmcdonaldThe growing attention of computer scientists, especially AI experts, to the role that emotion plays in human cognition interests me. It seems, as we find in W. Wayt Gibbs's 2003 Scientific American article "Why Machines Should Fear", that properly functioning artificial intelligences would need emotions in order to be functional.
It's interesting that Star Trek's Vulcans, renowned for their devotion to pure logic, evolved in the 1960s, a time when the legitimacy of human emotion as a scientific tool was grossly underestimated. Might that franchise, in its own inimitably inarticulate way, might have been trying to deconstruct this myth with the numerous episodes featuring Vulcans forced to feel emotion, to laugh and to cry and to behave like human beings? Not being able to feel, or to express feeling, or to relate to others' feelings, is among humans far more often a sign of dysfunction than of superiority. Emotion matters.
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agirlnamedluna considers this question. What is free will but a synthesis of reason and emotion?
But Norman's point goes much deeper. "The cognitive sciences grew up studying cognition--rational, logical thought," he notes. Norman himself participated in the birth of the field, joining a program in mathematical psychology at the University of Pennsylvania and later helping to launch the human information–processing department (now cognitive science) at the University of California at San Diego. "Emotion was traditionally ignored as some leftover from our animal heritage," he says. "It turns out that's not true.
"We now know, for example, that people who have suffered damage to the prefrontal lobes so that they can no longer show emotions are very intelligent and sensible, but they cannot make decisions." Although such damage is rare, and he cites little other scientific evidence, Norman concludes that "emotion, or 'affect,' is an information processing system, similar to but distinct from cognition. With cognition we understand and interpret the world--which takes time," he says. "Emotion works much more quickly, and its role is to make judgments--this is good, that is bad, this is safe."
The two systems are intertwined at a biological level, Norman points out. "The affective system pumps neurotransmitters into the brain, changing how the brain works. You actually think differently when you are anxious than when you are happy. Anxiety causes you to focus in on problems; if something doesn't work, you try it again, harder. But when you're happy, you tend to be more creative and interruptible." So if only for purely utilitarian reasons, devices and software should be designed to influence the mood of the user; they will be more effective because they are more affective.
It's interesting that Star Trek's Vulcans, renowned for their devotion to pure logic, evolved in the 1960s, a time when the legitimacy of human emotion as a scientific tool was grossly underestimated. Might that franchise, in its own inimitably inarticulate way, might have been trying to deconstruct this myth with the numerous episodes featuring Vulcans forced to feel emotion, to laugh and to cry and to behave like human beings? Not being able to feel, or to express feeling, or to relate to others' feelings, is among humans far more often a sign of dysfunction than of superiority. Emotion matters.
UPDATE (1:55 PM) :
agirlnamedluna considers this question. What is free will but a synthesis of reason and emotion?
