Psychology concepts and applications

¶ … Self-Awareness

The psychological issue of attention and intention is especially interesting when applied to the field of robotics. It raises some serious questions about the inherent implications of existence and self-awareness, especially in the robots demonstrated in Monterey, California by Hod Lipson in 2007. Arguably the most pressing, profound, and complex question arising from these self-aware robots is the question of motivation. Attention to one thing, as stated in the text, must come at the expense of attention to something else -- there is always a trade off (Schwartz & Begley 2002). The motivations observed in these robots, and the actions that such motivations created, have serious implications on the ways human pay attention, develop intentions, and set about carrying out their goals.

As William James described in the late nineteenth century, and as it is reiterated in the text, "to focus attention on one idea, on one possible course of action...is precisely what we mean by an act of volition" (Schwartz & Begley 2002). That is, making a decision to pay attention to one thing, and to develop a plan of action -- an intention with specific actions to be taken on our part and expected consequences as a result of thee actions -- is an act of will. James "intuited" this, and modern research has borne this assumption out (Schwartz & Begley 2002). The near-constant and ever-growing assault on our senses competing for our mental attention makes this principle fairly easy to perceive; we must always decide to pay attention to the task at hand rather than the distraction out the window, or to tear ourselves away from the television in order to answer the phone -- which input we decide to pay attention to determines the direction of our progression and the formation of our intentions far more than the input itself.

In human beings, both James and the authors of the text consider this the ultimate act of "morality," asserting that this morality underlies all of our decisions (Schwartz & Begley 2002). The robots that exhibit self-aware behavior and develop their own intentions must possess the same basic morality, then. This morality is more explicitly linked to immediate rewards, however; the walking robot, for instance, was not given any instruction or training, but was rewarded for developing a self-model and managing to move forward (Lipson 2007). Its attention and intentions were shaped by the application of this reward, suggesting that the "morality" that theoretically drives intentions in humans must also be directed by the belief in a reward.