IUBio

evolutionary significance of emotions !!

ashwin kelkar ashwin_k18 at my-deja.com
Thu Feb 17 00:21:38 EST 2000


> People who work in artificial intelligence have had great difficulty
> getting systems to behave in intelligent ways by reasoning logically
> from fixed sets of axioms.  My impression is that a better approach is
> based on "value driven decision systems", which assign a "goodness"
> rating to any given situation, and choose actions that they believe
> will maximize goodness.  If you consider that emotions are the brain's
> way of encoding the goodness of the situation, then I think their
> existence and utility begin to make sense.

This i agree with, it makes sense. Then is it that only humans are
capable of 'defining' emotions ? well if emotions are the brains way of
analysing situations fast and effectively then are we the only ones
with enough reasoning to determine what causes them or 'what' we feel.
If this is so then we should be able to control emotions consciously
but from personal experience i have found this tough. i do not believe
animals can control their emotions. If we cannot define what we feel
then they cannot be called emotions but will have to be called instincts
which ar like the *axioms* we begin our life with. Thank you


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.




More information about the Neur-sci mailing list

Send comments to us at biosci-help [At] net.bio.net