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Emotion

State of the Art: Emotion

Keith Oatley on Emotion as the Measure of Humankind-the first of an occasional series of 'State of the Art' guides to major topics in psychology.

18 June 1998

In James Cameron's film Terminator 2 a humanoid robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger explains that he (it) is equipped with a micro-chip based on connectionist neural-net architecture. Already knowledgeable, he learns more about human beings by associating with them. He comes to understand the patterning of human emotional behaviour but, of course, he does not feel emotions.

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