Who Needs Emotions? The Brain Meets the Robot

232 robots
from mental processes other than current perception (e.g., embarrassment
about what you said yesterday).
Furthermore, the above states vary in cognitive sophistication. The first,
for example, might only require a reactive perceptual process that involves
a matcher comparing current perceptions to innate patterns (i.e., those of
spiders), which in turn triggers an alarm mechanism. The alarm mechanism
could then cause various visceral processes (e.g., release of hormones, widening
of the pupils) in addition to modifications of action tendencies and
dispositions (e.g., the disposition to run away or to scream; cf. LeDoux, 1996,
and Fellous & LeDoux’s Chapter 4).
The second, for example, could be similar to the first in that large objects
cause anxiety, or it could be learned because fast-approaching vehicles
in the past have caused state 3 to be instantiated, which in turn formed an
association between it and large vehicles so that the presence of large
vehicles alone can instantiate state 3. State 2 then involves a permanent dispositional
state by virtue of the learned associative connection between large
vehicles and state 3. State 2 is activated upon perceiving a large vehicle,
regardless of whether it is approaching or not.
The fourth involves even more in that it requires projections concerning
the future and is instantiated because of possible negative outcomes.
Consequently, a system that can instantiate state 4 will have to be able to
construe and represent possible future states and maybe assess their likelihood.
Note, however, that simple forms of state 4 might be possible in a
system that has learned a temporal association only (namely, that a particular
situation, e.g., that of a thug asking for one’s wallet, is always preceded
by encountering a thug). In that case, a simple conditioning mechanism might
be sufficient.
For the remaining examples, however, conditioning is not sufficient.
Rather, reasoning processes of varying complexity are required that combine
various kinds of information. In state 6, this may be evidence from one’s
medical history, statements of doctors, common-sense knowledge, etc. The
information needs to be corroborated in some way (whether the corroboration
is valid or not does not matter) to cause the instantiation of these states.
For the last three, it is likely that additional reflective processes are involved,
which are capable of representing the very system that instantiates them in
different possible contexts and evaluating future outcomes with respect to
these contexts and the role of the system in them (e.g., a context in which
the disease has manifested itself and how friends would react to it or how
colleagues would perceive one’s failure to get the proof right).
The above paragraphs are, of course, only very sketchy outlines that hint
at the kind of functional analysis we have in mind, which eventually leads to
a list of functional components that are required for an affective state of a