[comp.ai.philosophy] Toward an Emotional Computer ...

fellous@pipiens.usc.edu (Jean-Marc Fellous) (12/17/90)

My general goal (PhD thesis in Computer Science) is to find (if possible ?)
models of Emotions to be applied to the different aspects of Computer Science
(AI, DAI, Neural Networks, Brain Theory, Logic ...).
I would appreciate any suggestion, comment, reference and contacts with
people interested in this exiting topic.
In the meantime, here is an annoucement -

 __________________________________________________________________________
/                               U.S.C                                      \
|                                                                          |
|                 C N E  Student Workshop on Emotions                      |
|                                                                          |
|                            CALL FOR PAPERS                               |
|                           *****************                              |
\__________________________________________________________________________/


The Center For Neural Engineering of the university of Southern California 
invites all students interested in Emotions to submit a paper to be eventually 
presented during a one-day Workshop (of a date t.b.a. at the End of February 
1991).
The Workshop is opened to Graduate students (MA,MS,PhD) and College Seniors 
irrespective to their major (faculty will only be considered for publication), 
having pursued (or pursuing) research activities on such aspects of Emotions as

	- The nature of Emotion
	- The physiology of Emotion
	- The perception of Emotions
	- The relations between Emotion and Cognition
	- Developemental aspects of Emotion
	- Artificial Intelligence models of Emotions
	- Neural network models of Emotions
	- Philosophical issues of Emotion and reductionism
	- ...

Applicants should send a 2 page summary of the proposed paper and a letter of 
motivation in which they state their status, major, interests, name, address and
telephone number (for reply).

Materials should be submitted by January 31st to

	Jean-Marc Fellous
	Center for Neural Engineering
	University of Southern California
	Los Angeles  CA 90089-2520
	Telephone (213) 740 3506
	email fellous@rana.usc.edu


ps: Travel expenses will not be covered by the CNE, but lunch will be provided.
pps: Authors of the chosen papers will receive a copy of the presented
papers (by mail if they could not attend the Workshop).


Thank you,

Jean-Marc

danforth@riacs.edu (Douglas G. Danforth) (12/18/90)

In <28883@usc> fellous@pipiens.usc.edu (Jean-Marc Fellous) writes:


>My general goal (PhD thesis in Computer Science) is to find (if possible ?)
>models of Emotions to be applied to the different aspects of Computer Science
>(AI, DAI, Neural Networks, Brain Theory, Logic ...).
>I would appreciate any suggestion, comment, reference and contacts with
>people interested in this exiting topic.
...
>Thank you,

>Jean-Marc

     Might I suggest you look at chapter 10, page 107, of Pentti Kanerva's 
book for a discussion of "good" and "bad" states in systems built from
associative memories. He suggests that some states are inherently good or
bad (built-in)  and that action sequences can be learned that will choose 
actions that lead toward good states and away from bad (one might be 
tempted to assign an emotion to such behavior :)

Kanerva, P. (1988). "Sparse Distributed Memory", Cambridge, MA., MIT Press.
--
Douglas G. Danforth   		    (danforth@riacs.edu)
Research Institute for Advanced Computer Science (RIACS)
M/S 230-5, NASA Ames Research Center
Moffett Field, CA 94035

teskridg@nmsu.edu (Tom Eskridge) (12/19/90)

For the use of emotions in problem solving and daydreaming, see Erik T.
Mueller's book:

Mueller, E.T. (1989) Daydreaming in Humans and Machines: A Computer Model of
the Stream of Thought, Ablex Publishing Corp, Norwood, NJ.

tom eskridge
computing research laboratory, new mexico state university
teskridg@nmsu.edu