# The Emotion Machine > Mediated Wiki article. Canonical URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/The_Emotion_Machine > Markdown URL: https://mediated.wiki/source/The_Emotion_Machine.md > Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine > Source revision: 1328344126 > License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) 2006 book by Marvin Minsky The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind Author Marvin Minsky Language English Genre Non-fiction Publication date 2006 ISBN 9780743276634 OCLC 70122576 ***The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind***[1] is a 2006 book by cognitive scientist [Marvin Minsky](/source/Marvin_Minsky) that elaborates and expands on Minsky's ideas as presented in his earlier book *[Society of Mind](/source/Society_of_Mind)* (1986). Minsky argues that emotions are different ways to think that our mind uses to increase our intelligence. He challenges the distinction between emotions and other kinds of thinking. His main argument is that emotions are "ways to think" for different "problem types" that exist in the world, and that the brain has rule-based mechanisms (selectors) that turn on emotions to deal with various problems. The book reviews the accomplishments of [AI](/source/Artificial_intelligence), why modelling an AI is difficult in terms of replicating the behaviors of humans, if and how AIs think, and in what manner they might experience struggles and pleasures.[2] ## Reviews The [neurologist](/source/Neurologist) Richard Restak said in a review for *[The Washington Post](/source/The_Washington_Post)*:[3] Minsky does a marvelous job parsing other complicated mental activities into simpler elements. ... But he is less effective in relating these emotional functions to what's going on in the brain. ## Outline Minsky outlines the book as follows:[4] 1. "We are born with many mental resources." 1. "We learn from interacting with others." 1. "Emotions are different Ways to Think." 1. "We learn to think about our recent thoughts." 1. "We learn to think on multiple levels." 1. "We accumulate huge stores of commonsense knowledge." 1. "We switch among different Ways to Think." 1. "We find multiple ways to represent things." 1. "We build multiple models of ourselves." ## References 1. **[^](#cite_ref-1)** Minsky, Marvin (2006). [*The Emotion Machine*](https://archive.org/details/emotionmachineco00mins). Simon & Schuster. [ISBN](/source/ISBN_(identifier)) [0-7432-7663-9](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0-7432-7663-9). 1. **[^](#cite_ref-2)** ["*The Emotion Machine*"](http://bluerectangle.com/book_reviews/view_one_review/2538). *BlueRectangle.com*. Retrieved 2010-06-30. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-3)** Richard Restak, ["Mind Over Matter"](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/14/AR2006121401554.html), *The Washington Post*, 17 December 2006. 1. **[^](#cite_ref-4)** ["Acknowledgments for the Emotion Machine"](http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/Introduction.html). ## External links - [Marvin Minsky](http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/) [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20080803231734/http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/) 2008-08-03 at the [Wayback Machine](/source/Wayback_Machine) at MIT - Minsky, Marvin (Sep 12, 2007). ["Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind"](https://web.archive.org/web/20160530104419/http://video.mit.edu/watch/emotion-machine-commonsense-thinking-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-the-human-mind-9267). *Video lecture*. MIT. Archived from [the original](http://video.mit.edu/watch/emotion-machine-commonsense-thinking-artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-the-human-mind-9267/) on 2016-05-30. **Other reviews** - [Science and Evolution - Books and Reviews](https://evomech5.blogspot.com/2006/12/mind-over-matter-review-of-emotion.html) - [Technology Review](http://www.technologyreview.com/article/18344/) This article about a psychology book is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. - [v](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Psych-book-stub) - [t](/source/Template_talk%3APsych-book-stub) - [e](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:EditPage/Template:Psych-book-stub) --- Adapted from the Wikipedia article [The Emotion Machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emotion_Machine?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.