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The subject of our first student-driven discussion will be emotions—what are they for,
how do they work, are they beneficial, can you write algorithms for
them? The discussion will take place in the latter half of class next
Wednesday (13 Feb
20 Feb).
Some of you are on the discussion panel for next week. You are
expected to write out your answers to the discussion questions
below. You may bring them with you during the discussion, and may
write notes on them as well. We'll collect them at
the end of class— our grading criterion will be evidence of
thoughtfulness and preparation.
Others of you will be in the audience. You are also expected to prepare
your answers to these questions so that you can participate actively, but
you are not required to write them out. (We do encourage you to do
so, however, because it promotes coherent and concise discussion.)
You are all enthusiastically encouraged to work together on these
assignments; of course, the final write-up must be your own work.
Assignment 1: Emotions and Rationality
In The Emotion Machine, Prof. Minsky argues that “each of our major ‘emotional states’ results from turning some set of resources on and turning another set of them off. Each such selection will change how we think by changing our brain's activities.”
Your task is to critically analyze this thesis, by determining
your answers to the following discussion topics.
- Is there an evolutionary advantage to having (at least some of our) emotions? If so,
what is the advantage, and how does it outweigh apparent
disadvantages? If not, why haven't we evolved out of having emotions
yet?
- Prof. Minsky denies that there is a meaningful difference
between emotional and rational thinking. Find as many
counterexamples as you can to this hypothesis. For example:
- Emotions are short-lived.
- Emotional thinking happens without our control.
- Emotional thinking happens instantly, without deliberation.
- Emotional thinking adds color to life, through our likes,
dislikes, passions, tastes, and feelings.
- Emotional thinking is the primary source of our creativity
- Emotional thinking results in extreme or rapidly-varying
behavior.
- Emotional thinking results in a temporary disturbance of
your usual personality.
- Emotional thinking often results in actions we later
regret.
- Emotional thinking is our natural state, while rationality occurs
only with difficult training.
- Emotional thinking short-circuits your better
judgement.
After you collect a list of such differences between emotional and
rational thinking, try to reconcile them with Prof. Minsky's
hypothesis. Is he right or wrong, after all?
- Is it possible to program a computer with emotions? Would it be
desireable?
- How would you construct a
program which would solve problems ‘emotionally’ rather
than ‘rationally’? Is a different design strategy required?
- Some critics of AI
(e.g. Searle,
Penrose) have argued that even
if you could program a computer to behave as if it had
emotions, it nonetheless would not actually feel anything the way
that we do— it would only be able to execute
subroutines, which only cause actions, not feelings. What do you
think?
(See also: Prof. Minsky's reply to Penrose)
