This is a chapter by Ricardo Sanz, Carlos Hernández, Jaime Gómez and Adolfo Hernando that has been published in the book Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems 2008

Abstract: The construction of fully effective systems seems to pass through the proper exploitation of goal-centric self-evaluative capabilities that let the system teleologically self-manage. Emotions seem to provide this kind of functionality to biological systems and hence the interest in emotion for function sustainment in artificial systems performing in changing and uncertain environments; far beyond the media hullabaloo of displaying human-like emotion-laden faces in robots. This chapter provides a brief analysis of the scientific theories of emotion and presents an engineering approach for developing technology for robust autonomy by implementing functionality inspired in that of biological emotions.

Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems 2008 Series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology , Vol. 657 Hussain, A.; Aleksander, I.; Smith, L.S.; Barros, A.K.; Chrisley, R.; Cutsuridis, V. (Eds.) 2010, 310 p., ISBN: 978-0-387-79099-2

Get more details about the book at the Springer Website.

A preprint version of our chapter can be downloaded here from the ASLab Website.

In the past formal and abstract models have attempted to shed light on the topics of the Mind and Brain, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. This has created a vast proliferation of information, which is currently lacking any one dominant model for understanding the mental processes. The Journal of Mind Theory we are trying to create is an attempt to tackle these problems.

The journal’s aim is to consolidate and explore these formal and abstract tools for modeling cognitive phenomena, creating a more cohesive and concrete formal approach to understanding the mind/brain, striving for precision and creating clarity in this topic of interest.

What follows is a list of questions by Jaime Gomez (JG) and answers from Ricardo Sanz (RS) on these issues.

This is an anonymous letter written about 150 A.D. The author is describing early Christians to a distinguished and noble pagan gentleman (in some places it is said that the author is not anonymous but Mathetes).

The author of the letter writes,

“The Christians are distinguished from others neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe, for they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a particular form of speech. They follow the customs of the citizens of whatever country they inhabit in regard to clothes, or food, or the rest of their ordinary conduct."

Indeed I received the text of this Letter to Diognetus from my friend in an attempt to explain me what makes a believer different from a person that practices an ethics that is externally indistinguishable from that of the believer.

However, Diognetus's letter, considered just beautiful in some aesthetical scales, is pretty clear in this particular point: "you must not hope to learn the mystery of their peculiar mode of worshipping God from any mortal".

In a word, do not expect that they will be able to explain themselves.