Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

asic principles for emotional processing 83
processing device that may pursue abstract goals but lacks motivation, strivings,
desires, fears, and hopes.
In this connection, we should mention the so-called cognitive approach
to emotions, which treats emotions as appraisals, i.e., thoughts about situations
(Arnold, 1960; Schacter & Singer, 1962; Mandler, 1984; Frijda, 1986,
1993; Ellsworth, 1991; Lazarus, 1991; Scherer, 1993; see also Chapter 7,
Ortony et al.). While some appraisal theorists allow for unconscious appraisals
(which is consistent with a processing approach), most emphasize appraisals
as conscious thoughts and use verbal self-report to understand the nature
of the appraisal process. Conscious appraisals may indeed occur during
an emotional state, but there are other, more fundamental processes at work
as well. An understanding of these more fundamental processes is what the
processing approach is all about.
The processing approach allows us to study unconscious emotional functions
similarly in humans and other animals and at the same time offers an
approach to understanding emotional consciousness (feelings) as well (since
feelings themselves result from processes that occur unconsciously). In addition,
the processing approach offers another advantage. It allows emotion
and cognition to be treated similarly (as unconscious processes that can, but
do not necessarily, lead to conscious experiences), and it opens the door for
the much-needed integration of cognition, emotion, and motivation—the
mental trilogy (LeDoux, 2002). Whether emotion, motivation, and cognition
are three distinct but tightly interacting systems or whether emotion is
an integral architectural feature of the cognitive and motivational systems
(or vice-versa) remains to be established.
SHOULD WE INTEGRATE THE COGNITIVE BRAIN
WITH THE LIMBIC SYSTEM?
The rise of cognitive science led to important advances in understanding the
brain mechanisms of perception, attention, memory, and other cognitive processes.
One might be tempted to say that the way to foster the synthesis of
cognition and emotion into a new science of mind would be to put all this new
information about the cognitive brain together with the view of the emotional
brain provided by the limbic system concept put forth in the context of an
evolutionary explanation of mind and behavior (MacLean, 1949, 1952; Isaacson,
1982). However, this would be a mistake. In spite of the fact that the limbic
system concept remains the predominant view about how the brain makes
emotions, it is a flawed and inadequate theory of the emotional brain.
The limbic system concept was built upon the view, promoted by comparative
anatomists in the first half of the 20th century, that the neocortex