Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal about the Mind and Artificial Intelligence

273 Pages·2001·15.98 MB·English

by  Craig DeLancey

Passionate Engines
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Passionate Engines
What Emotions Reveal About
Mind and Artificial Intelligence
Craig DeLancey
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2002
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2002 by Craig DeLancey
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
DeLancey, Craig, 1965-
Passionate engines : what emotions reveal about mind and artificial intelligence / Craig
DeLancey.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-19-514271-3 ISBNO-19-5I7366-X(pbk.)
1. Philosophy of mind. 2. Emotions (Philosophy) 3. Artificial intelligence. I. Title.
BD418.3.D45 2002
128'.37—dc21 00-066903
Printed as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2004
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
For Lorena
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Preface
Goals of the Book
This book is a survey of what basic emotions reveal about some central
problems of the philosophy of mind. Given their relative importance to
our mental lives, emotions remain the mental phenomena most neglected
by contemporary philosophy of mind and the sciences of mind. This is not
to deny that important work has been done in our time in the philosophy
and science of emotions; rather, it is to note that for the traditional interests
of philosophers of mind, cognitive scientists, artificial intelligence re-
searchers, and many others, emotions remain peripheral, sometimes even
a seemingly irrelevant issue. This is a glaring exception not only because
emotions play such important roles, but also because the last several de-
cades have seen a tremendous growth in our scientific understanding of
emotions. In this book, I will show that a proper accounting of some of the
emotions is essential to many of those aspects of the philosophy and sci-
ences of mind heretofore considered distinct from them. Given our in-
creased knowledge about emotions, the time is now ripe for an overview of
how they reflect on some of the theoretical issues of these disciplines. This
book provides such a survey for five central issues:
(1) The Affect Program Theory. Emotions are mental phenomena of
intrinsic interest; the affect program theory is a compelling and
powerful theory that explains what some of the emotions are. I
introduce the theory, defend it against rival views, and outline
some of what it can tell us about the mind.
(2) Intentionality. The basic emotions are representational states. I de-
scribe the structure of the intentionality of the basic emotions, and
explore some implications of this enriched view.
(3) Rationality. Philosophers have long thought that emotions may
play an important role in rational action; I describe some aspects
of this relationship, and apply my findings to a core problem con-
cerning practical reasoning.
viii Preface
(4) Phenomenal consciousness. Some features of phenomenal expe-
rience are particularly pressing when we consider the basic emo-
tions. Discovering the structure of the relation between phenome-
nal experience and affects will be used as a way to explore the more
general issue of the relation between those experiences and the
body states of the organism.
(5) Artificial intelligence (hereafter "AI"). Work in AI offers us an op-
portunity to test hypotheses, and also helps us to question our own
presuppositions. Our best understanding of the affects reveals im-
portant principles useful to the theoretical underpinnings of our
attempts to engineer intelligence.
These last four issues are not necessarily related to each other except in as
much as they are all core concerns of the philosophy of mind. I chose these
because they are topics in the philosophy of mind about which, I believe,
our understanding of the basic emotions has profound lessons to offer.
My approach to these issues is united under three themes. First, the the-
ory that I argue for in the first section of the book—the affect program the-
ory—is used throughout the text. To attempt an overview of all the import
of all the things that we call "emotions" would be folly. Focusing on a small
number of emotions and a single theory of their nature will allow me to
reveal some of the important implications of these affects, instead of con-
stantly obscuring any such lessons under difficult issues of taxonomy.
Second, I argue that the affect program theory is consistent with, and
points us toward, a view of mind quite contrary to much contemporary
theory of mind. I call this the hierarchical view of mind. This is a modular
view of mind in which certain capabilities are seen as more fundamental to
autonomy, and are likely to be required by other (hence, dependent) capa-
bilities. In particular, many of our affective capabilities, and also our capa-
bilities underlying motor control and its integration with perception (ca-
pabilities that are likely highly integrated with affect), are more
fundamental than, and can and often do operate independently of, the
kinds of capabilities that are typically taken to constitute "high cognition";
and in turn many cognitive abilities make use of, and may require, these
other subcognitive abilities. Instead of a top-down, highly cognitive view
of mind, in which language is seen as the fundamental mental capability
that enables autonomy and intelligence, a proper appreciation for the role
of affects in our lives reveals that we must start with a bottom-up, embodied
view of mind in which motor control and its integration with perception,
along with our affective capabilities, are the fundamental features of auton-
omy, upon which intelligence must be built. Equivalently, I argue that ex-
plaining a general conception of autonomy, and not cognition, should be
the primary goal of the philosophy of mind. This is a theme that arises
throughout the book.
Third is a theme that will come to the fore several times: Giving the
relevant emotions their due reveals a need to reevaluate the richness of a
Preface ix
naturalist view of mind. In contemporary philosophy of mind, almost
everyone pledges allegiance to naturalism; yet we are in the ironic position
that there is a widespread reaction to naturalism in contemporary analytic
philosophy, often apparently motivated by the belief that naturalism is an
impoverished approach to mind. This is ironic because the offered alter-
natives are usually stupefyingly simplistic, the most common being that all
of mind and action can be explained by generic concepts of belief and
desire. Since my concern in this book is with basic emotions and other
motivating states, I will on several occasions discuss the inappropriateness
of the philosopher's notion of desire; it is hard to overestimate the harm
that this notion has done to moral psychology, action theory, and other
aspects of the philosophy of mind. In contrast, far from being a source of
simplistic descriptions likely to label as illusions whole swathes of our
mental lives as we reduce down to some simple physics, the sciences of
mind usually reveal surprising complexity (for example, there are many
kinds of motivational states, but no generic one corresponding to the phil-
osophical notion of desire) and are causes even for the introduction of new
entities and thus an expansion of the relevant ontology. In this book, I do
not review the literature and issues in the philosophy of science concerning
naturalism, but rather I show by example that a kind of naturalism is both
richer than it has been portrayed and far richer than the alternatives.
Through the study of the basic emotions certain features of a mature view
of mind can be clarified, and a rejection of a simplistic portrayal of natural-
ism is one such feature.
By saying that an account of some emotions is essential to the philosophy
and science of mind, I mean at least that we cannot expect a theory of mind
to be sufficient unless we have taken into account whether it is consistent
with what we know about these emotions. Establishing this point is easily
done when we recognize that many theories of mind, which seem quite
plausible when emotions are ignored, become quite implausible when
emotions are taken into account. This is the case not just because these
theories fail to predict or explain emotions. After all, since many research-
ers in the philosophy and science of mind see emotions as something to be
tacked onto a theory of mind after cognition is explained, the failure to
predict or explain emotions is hardly surprising. Also, there is broad agree-
ment that if we want to model real biological minds, we will need to model
affects, since they are biological events which, in us, are nearly omnipres-
ent. But even the kinds of things that a philosopher or scientist might want
to study independently of emotions are often so highly integrated with
them that treating these emotions as a kind of sideshow can only result in
inadequate theory. Many of these inadequate theories are considered viable
in contemporary philosophy and science of mind, and their continued pur-
suit results in wasted effort.
Although these negative conclusions are crucial, my task is not solely to
attack inadequate approaches. Throughout, my arguments for the general
and widely applicable affect program theory will prove useful in showing