An Optimality Theoretical Analysis of Urge Interactions in Toda's (1982) Emotional Fungus-Eater Robots

Abstract

Toda's (1982) Urge Theory of Emotions (TUTE) is a deductive theory of emotion and cognition. The TUTE is deductive in that one of thrusts of the TUTE is a detailed analysis of individual emotions as necessary softwares of robots named Fungus-Eaters working on an imaginary planet. The Urges are built-in motivational subroutines for making decisions and executing action plans in order to solve survival problems in a wild environment. The urges are supposed to interact in a situation but not to be absolute but violable. However, the nature of the urge interactions remains to be clarified. The purpose of this study is to apply Optimality Theory (Prince & Smolensky, 2004) to an analysis of the urge interactions because OT is a theory of interactions of violable constraints. The application makes the urge interactions more visible by means of tableau and accessible for scrutiny than in the TUTE.


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