Agents that Combine Emotions and Rationality: a Context Independent Cognitive Architecture

Abstract:- Intelligent behaviours have been traditionally considered exclusively as products of pure rationality processes. Considering other influential factors, such as emotions, has been accused of being “non scientific”. However, pure rational processes fail when trying to explain most of human behaviours, in which emotion plays a key role. Nevertheless, emotional factors add an extra complexity to agent architectures, making them, hitherto, either few efficient or few reusable. This paper presents a context independent cognitive architecture for agents that combine emotions and rationality, named COGNITIVA, which bets on adaptivity as a weapon to fight against that complexity. Key-Words:- Cognitive agent architecture, specification process, emotion, personality, virtual characters, adaptivity 1 The Role of Emotions in the Rational Process 1.1 Emotion and Reason, Oil and Water? Emotions and reason have been traditionally considered as two sides of the same coin and, therefore, antagonistic and non combinable. Emotions are something rather irrational that plays down value to huma