EECS 690 April 21

Star Trek and Psychoanalytic Theory The cast of the original Star Trek was intentionally formulated in many ways, representing people of different racial and national identity operating effectively in a cooperative enterprise. The trio of Spock, Kirk, and McCoy were intended to make explicit the workings of the mind as then understood by Freudian Psychoanalytic Theory. Spock is the coolly rational superego, McCoy, the emotional and impulsive Id, while the Captain as Ego, is in charge.

Wallach, Allen, and Star Trek The authors here mis-introduce this example to transition into a discussion of the role that emotion plays (or does not play) in morality.

The relationships between morality and emotions Certainly, emotions like shame or guilt are strongly connected to moral situations and may motivate moral behavior. However, claims that morality just is a set of emotional reactions is a violation of the is/ought distinction. Certainly emotions and feelings provide us with important information quickly, and considerations of the feelings and emotions of others is an ethically relevant concern.

Feelings/emotions distinction A feeling involves something visceral. A feeling of pain is not itself and emotion, but may cause emotions. Emotions often involve some feelings or other, but the emotions isn’t defined in terms of just the feelings. Feelings and Emotions are generally lumped into a category called by some “Affective States” (so called because they are things that just happen to you, i.e. things that affect you, not things you effect) and called “Conative States” by others (as opposed to Cognitive States).

Emotional states as information Facial expression, non-verbal vocal utterances, body language, etc. are all ways in which people communicate vast amounts of information to each other, so any system that was able to (even in a limited way) read these cues, could interact much more efficiently with human beings. An application to assist sufferers of Asperger’s syndrome, many of whom have significant difficulty interpreting facial expressions. Such an application could be a prosthetic for social interaction the way that a prosthetic leg assist in walking or the way a notepad becomes a prosthetic memory.

Affective/conative communication Breaking up facial expressions, body movements, postures, vocal tone, etc. into their discrete parts to make use of such information for the purposes of communication is one thing that computers are getting more and more able to do. It is easy to see why this might be important, but does a system need affective or conative states of its own to make moral decisions?

Three general viewpoints: Mainstream view (dates back to even pre-Socratic philosophy): Moral reasoning and decision-making should be devoid of emotional bias. Hume’s view (others have subscribed to this view, but Hume is the best early proponent of such a view): Conative States (a term invented by Hume) like sympathy and empathy form the backbone of the ethical conventions of civil society. Aristotle: Affective states influence the way we behave, and so they are good insofar as they encourage virtuous behavior, and should be held in check insofar as they do not.

Five categories of emotion theory This breakdown is owed to Jesse Prinz Product theories: –Feeling Theories: emphasizes the conscious experience of emotional states –Behavior Theories: identify emotions with specific behavioral responses Process theories: –Somatic Theories: emphasize the bodily processes associated with emotions –Processing-mode Theories: emphasize the role of emotions in modulating other mental activities –Cognitive Theories: emphasize the role of beliefs in emotions

From Buridan’s Ass to Emotional Heuristics. Medieval philosopher Jean Buridan described a thought experiment in which an ass starves to death equidistant between two equivalent bales of hay. The lesson of Buridan’s Ass is that motivation and decision has to be at least partly affective/conative. Contemporary thinkers point to ‘emotional heuristics’ as reinforced short-cuts for performing complex tasks. Much of this work was pioneered by Herbert Simon, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 for his work.

Functionalism and Somatic Theories “[A robot determined to] allow no harm to a human being would need to be aware of the facts of human pain sensitivity. A quick way to this knowledge is to have the same sensitivities.” (p.152) Somatic theories strive to produce the functional equivalents of certain affective/conative states. Such concerns as above indicate the importance or potential usefulness for systems with such capacities, but doesn’t answer the question of whether a system needs to have its own affective/conative states to be moral.