Robots React, but Can They Feel?

Abstract

This chapter addresses the “Hard Problem” of consciousness in the context of robot emotions. The Hard Problem, as defined by Chalmers, refers to the task of explaining the relation between conscious experience and the physical processes associated with it. For example, a robot can act afraid, but could it feel fear? Using protophenomenal analysis, which reduces conscious experience to its smallest units and investigates their physical correlates, we consider whether robots could feel their emotions, and the conditions under which they might do so. We find that the conclusion depends on unanswered but empirical questions in the neuropsychology of human consciousness. However, we do conclude that conscious emotional experience will require a robot to have a rich representation of its body and the physical state of its internal processes, which is important even in the absence of conscious experience.