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Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

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Ho<strong>the</strong>ads | 373apartment, I can force open a window, call <strong>the</strong> landlord, or try to reach<strong>the</strong> latch through <strong>the</strong> mail slot. Each of <strong>the</strong>se goals is attained by a chainof subgoals. My fingers won't reach <strong>the</strong> latch, so <strong>the</strong> subgoal is to findpliers. But my pliers are inside, so I set up a sub-subgoal of finding astore and buying new pliers. And so on. Most artificial intelligence systemsare built around means and ends, like <strong>the</strong> production system inChapter 2 with its stack of goal symbols displayed on a bulletin boardand <strong>the</strong> software demons that respond to <strong>the</strong>m.But where does <strong>the</strong> topmost goal, <strong>the</strong> one that <strong>the</strong> rest of <strong>the</strong> programtries to attain, come from? For artificial intelligence systems, it comesfrom <strong>the</strong> programmer. The programmer designs it to diagnose soybeandiseases or predict <strong>the</strong> next day's Dow Jones Industrial Average. Fororganisms, it comes from natural selection. The brain strives to put itsowner in circumstances like those that caused its ancestors to reproduce.(The brain's goal is not reproduction itself; animals don't know <strong>the</strong>facts of life, and people who do know <strong>the</strong>m are happy to subvert <strong>the</strong>m,such as when <strong>the</strong>y use contraception.) The goals installed in Homo sapiens,that problem-solving, social species, are not just <strong>the</strong> Four Fs. <strong>High</strong>on <strong>the</strong> list are understanding <strong>the</strong> environment and securing <strong>the</strong> cooperationof o<strong>the</strong>rs.And here is <strong>the</strong> key to why we have emotions. An animal cannot pursueall its goals at once. If an animal is both hungry and thirsty, it shouldnot stand halfway between a berry bush and a lake, as in <strong>the</strong> fable about<strong>the</strong> indecisive ass who starved between two haystacks. Nor should it nibblea berry, walk over and take a sip from <strong>the</strong> lake, walk back to nibbleano<strong>the</strong>r berry, and so on. The animal must commit its body to one goal ata time, and <strong>the</strong> goals have to be matched with <strong>the</strong> best moments for achieving<strong>the</strong>m. Ecclesiastes says that to every tiling <strong>the</strong>re is a season, and a timeto every purpose under heaven: a time to weep, and a time to laugh; atime to love, and a time to hate. Different goals are appropriate when a lionhas you in its sights, when your child shows up in tears, or when a rival callsyou an idiot in public.The emotions are mechanisms that set <strong>the</strong> brain's highest-level goals.Once triggered by a propitious moment, an emotion triggers <strong>the</strong> cascadeof subgoals and sub-subgoals that we call thinking and acting. Because<strong>the</strong> goals and means are woven into a multiply nested control structureof subgoals within subgoals within subgoals, no sharp line divides thinkingfrom feeling, nor does thinking inevitably precede feeling or viceversa (notwithstanding <strong>the</strong> century of debate within psychology over

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