Although classical AI approaches have usually neglected the emotional dimension, it is becoming a key part of many of the current artificial cognitive architectures. The neurobiological study of emotions during the last decades has offered new insight. The analysis of patients that have lost part of their brains, and the use of brain imaging techniques, give scientists many significant clues about how our emotional brain works.

In the book “Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain” by neurologist Antonio R. Damasio [1], the argument is made that emotion and reason are quite dependent upon one another. The famous case of Phineas Cage, whose frontal lobes were damaged in an accident, is explored in this book. Phineas P. Gage (1823-1860) suffered a brain injury at work when a tamping iron accidentally passed through his skull (see picture).

Gage’s case is said to be the first clinical proof of the role of the frontal lobe in personality and social interaction. Actually, after Gage suffered the accident, his friends said that he was no longer the same - he became a very unsociable person. The following is an excerpt from Harlow – Cage’s doctor (1968):

Gage was fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. A child in his intellectual capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man. Previous to his injury, although untrained in the schools, he possessed a well-balanced mind, and was looked upon by those who knew him as a shrewd, smart businessman, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation. In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was 'no longer Gage. [2]

Damasio proposed a theory called somatic marker hypothesis, which suggests a link between the fontal lobes, emotion, and decision making. Since Cage’s case, Antonio Damasio,  Marc Hauser and colleagues have studies six more cases with damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), one of the social motional nodes of the brain. They have concluded that this damage increases utilitarian moral judgements [3]. Here, the term utilitarian comes form utilitarism, and and refers to moral judgements or dilemmas where there is a conflict between aggregate welfare and highly emotionally aversive behaviors (for instance, having to sacrifice one person's life to save a number of other lives).

According to Raymond J. Dolan,
Patients with medial prefrontal lesions often display irresponsible behavior, despite being intellectually unimpaired. But similar lesions occurring in early childhood can also prevent the acquisition of factual knowledge about accepted standards of moral behavior. [4]

[1] Antonio R. Damasio (1995) Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain
[2] Harlow, J.M. (1868). "Recovery from a Passage of an Iron Bar through the Head". Publications of the Massachusetts Medical Society 2: 327-347.
[3] Michael Koenigs, Liane Young, Ralph Adolphs, Daniel Tranel, Fiery Cushman, Marc Hauser & Antonio Damasio. Nature 446, 908-911 (19 April 2007).
[4] Raymond J. Dolan. On the neurology of morals. Nature Neuroscience  2, 927 - 929 (1999).

Related Links:

Phineas Gage information page: http://www.deakin.edu.au/hmnbs/psychology/gagepage/index.php
Fact sheets on brain injury:  http://www.braininjury.org.au/portal/index.php

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A Scale for Measuring Machine Consciousness

ConsScale is a tool for assessing the functional level of consciousness of a creature. It has been specifically designed for the evaluation of Machine Consciousness implementations.

Now a ConsScale microsite is available where you can explore the conceptual levels of consciousness defined in the scale, learn how agents can also be rated using a quantitative score, and use the online calculator to rate your own implementations:

http://conscious-robots.com/consscale/

ConsScale is a framework for characterizing the cognitive power of a creature. ConsScale includes the definition of an ordered list of cognitive levels arranged across a developmental path. The arrangement of the levels is inspired on the ontogeny and phylogeny of consciousness in biological organisms.
  The basic assumption is that there exist different kinds of minds, and they can be characterized in terms of ConsScale criteria. Using ConsScale, characterization and assessment of consciousness can be performed using three related tools:
 
- the ConsScale conceptual levels of consciousness (levels),
- the CQS (ConsScale Quantitative Score) (CQS), and
- the ConsScale radar graph representation (Calculator).
 
In order to assess the level of artificial consciousness of an agent using ConsScale, its architectural components have to be identified and its cognitive skills tested. Using this information as input, the scale can be used to obtain both a qualitative and a quantitative measure of consciousness:

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Journal of Mind Theory

Rigor in Cognitive Science

The UPM Autonomous Systems Lab (AsLab) has recently launched a new journal in the field of congnitive science. The focus of the new Journal of Mind Theory (JMT) is on precise, succinct, non-interpretable theories of hypotheses on the nature of the mind. The journal is edited by Ricardo Sanz and Jaime Gómez, and the editorial board includes well known experts in the fields of cognitive science and machine consciousness.

This journal tries to capture the formal science of mind, attempting to pursue the ultimate goal of a unified formal theory of mind, but open to any proposal and not tied to a specific language.

The first two numbers of the JMT are alredy online (including papers from James Albus, Ron Cottan, Pentti Haikonen, Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, Andrée C. Ehresmann, Tariq Samad, Lorenzo Magnani, Sarah Rebecca, and others) :

- JMT Vol. 0. No. 1.
- JMT Vol. 0. No. 2.

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Pentti Haikonen's architecture for conscious machines

By Trung Doan (doanviettrung a_t gmail dot com). 

Haikonen's contribution to the machine-consciousness endeavor is an architecture based on cognitive principles. He also developed some electronic microchips as a first step to building a machine based on that architecture.

Below, we look at how a Haikonen machine might achieve consciousness once built, by examining some of its cognitive capabilities, and in the process will briefly discuss the Haikonen architecture.

The Haikonen machine perceives

Robot Brains by Pentti Haikonen

The machine does not internally represent the ball as a round graphic, nor a set of numbers representing diameter, color, etc., but by this signal array. Haikonen calls this a "distributed signal representation".

Suppose the machine is shown several balls of different sizes, colors, etc., one at a time, and each time its microphone hears the sound pattern we humans understand as the word "ball". Because they appear at the same time repeatedly, the machine associates the sound pattern and the visual pattern together. The making of associations is how the machine's perception is done.

After several different balls are associated with that sound pattern, the machine finally learns to associate the "ball" sound pattern with anything that is round.

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