On the nature of artificial feelings

Abstract

Several fictitious scenarios provide us with questions about the nature of artificial and natural feelings. It turns out that, traditionally, three features are relevant for the attribution of an emotion to humans: the functional role it typically has; the phenomenal quality that typically accompanies it; and the neurophysiological basis that brings about the phenomenal state. On the basis of these features I discuss several cases: artificially generated feelings, feelings in artificial systems, and unfelt emotional processes in psychopathology. © 2009 Springer-Verlag New York.