Emotions

Many people believe that emotions are mysterious things that will prevent us from ever creating a Digital Intelligence. I believe that emotions in fact easier to understand that most other facets of a mind and will be a basic part of any intelligence that we build.

Here's why.

We feel emotions under certain conditions. For the purposes of this posting I'll focus on three emotions - surprise, frustration, and success. For example, we experience surprise when something unusual happens that we did not predict. Similarly, we experience frustration when we're having difficultly achieving a goal, and experience success when we accomplish a goal.

The question is: how do emotions help us?

Let's take the case of surprise. When something unexpected occurs, we don't know exactly why it happened. So in order to improve our chances of figuring out the underlying cause, it's important that we remember all the things that were happening around the time of the surprise so our mind can use this information when deducing the possible reasons. Assuming that our mind is constantly generating predictions and comparing them against observed events, it's easy to imagine our brain circuitry generating a localized "surprise" signal when a prediction doesn't match. This signal propagates quickly from the point of detection to areas throughout the brain. When an area receives a "surprise" signal, it will usually remember events especially well during that window of time to help the brain deduce the reason for the surprise. In addition, some areas of the brain respond to the signal by using face/body language to convey our state of surprise to the outside world. This has the benefit of harnessing others to also try and figure out the reason for the surprise. For example, if a Mother notices that her child is experiencing surprise, she will often try and figure out what the child is surprised by and then teach the child the reason for the particular event.

So in the case of surprise, the reason for the emotion is to harness the rest of the brain to try and figure out the reason for the surprise, as well as other people in the vicinity who might be able to help.

Now let's take the case of frustration. Once again, assuming that our minds have circuitry to detect the progress of a particular goal, it's easy to imagine the circuitry generating a "frustration" signal when a goal is taking too long. Like surprise, frustration propagates from the point of detection to areas throughout the brain. When an area of the brain receives a "frustration" signal, it might be able to come to the aid of the frustrated area and help solve the goal. In addition, if someone nearby notices that a person is frustrated, then will often come to help that person achieve the goal. For example, if a Father notices that his child is frustrated because he can't put his shoes on, he will often help the child to achieve that goal.

Once again, in the case of frustration the reason for the emotion is to harness the rest of the brain and any surrounding people to help achieve the goal that is taking too long.

Finally, let's take the case of success. When you achieve a goal, especially a difficult one, you experience success. The "success" signal is generated when the brain circuitry satisfies a goal. The signal propagates from the point of detection to many areas of the brain and rewards the areas that helped to achieve the goal. In addition, the expression of joy on your face causes a similar signal to be triggered in other people (if any) who were helping you to accomplish the goal, thereby also rewarding them.

Notice that in all three cases the emotional "signal" was initially triggered by brain circuitry that is specially designed to detect a particular internal state. The signal propagates throughout the brain and then continues to propagate to nearby people via face/body language. The signal causes areas within the brain to address the cause of the signal as well as engaging other minds in the vicinity.

I've left out a fair amount of detail in the preceding paragraphs, but I hope that I've made one point clear; emotions are vital for organizing the activity of a brain (and surrounding brains) to deal with a particular event. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a mind that doesn't use this approach.

Now that I've outlined the high-level reason for emotions, it's worthwhile pointing out that most people ultimately agree that they're useful. The thing that people have a particularly hard time with is why a particular emotion feels the way it does. In other words, why does frustration feel bad and why does success feel good? And similarly, even if a digital intelligence could generate a signal that represents frustration, how could it ever feel frustrated?

The last question is equivalent to the question "could a digital intelligence ever experience the color red?", and it sometimes called "the hard problem". I like to separate the practical role that emotion plays (which "mind engineers" could implement as described above) from more philosophical "hard problem" because it's useful to break problems down into smaller pieces and then solve each one.

I will address (and try to solve) "the hard problem" later in this series.