Connectionists: A cognitive blindspot: emotional control

[Claudius Gros]

Several important topics have been discussed lately
on this list, in particular consciousness and symbolism. 
Conspicuously absent is the role of the cogno-emotional 
control loop. This holds not only for our discussions
here, but essential for all viewpoints raised in the 
cognitive science and machine learning communities.

Affective neuroscience tells us that emotions prime 
cognition, with emotions being controlled by cognitive 
processes. It is also established that the resulting
cogno-emotional control loop is phylogenetically young 
and fully developed only in higher apes. For a recent 
review see

Emotions as abstract evaluation criteria in biological 
and artificial intelligences
Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 15, 726247 (2021). 
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2021.726247/full

Evolution has taken pains to endow animals with 
higher cognitive capabilities with a sophisticated 
cogno-emotional control loop. It seems hence likely 
that emotions are not just an add-on, as often 
implicitly assumed, but a conditio sine qua non for 
higher cognition.

A leading hypothesis is that emotions are essential
for task selection. Cognitive processes, biological or
via machine learning, are necessary for playing a game
of Go. With pure logical reasoning, if ever existing, 
one can however not decide whether it is 'better' (with
respect to which objective function?) to stay at home
and to play an online Go match, or to have dinner with 
a group of friends in a fancy restaurant.

Why are these insights important? Affective neuoscience
tells us in particular that consciousness is essential 
for closing the cogno-emotional control loop. From this 
perspective it seems strange that the problem of 
consciousness is regularly discussed on a pure
cognitive level.

These arguments also suggest that a reason for the 
stalling progress toward autonomously active AIs may 
be the lack of implementable theories for key emotional 
functionalities. Maybe the time has come to pay more
attention to emotions.

Claudius


-- 
### 
### Prof. Dr. Claudius Gros
### http://itp.uni-frankfurt.de/~gros
### 
### Complex and Adaptive Dynamical Systems, A Primer   
### A graduate-level textbook, Springer (2008/10/13/15)
### 
### Life for barren exoplanets: The Genesis project
### https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10509-016-2911-0
###