Body-based cognition: Reasoning guided by feelings, emotions and metaphor

A computer reasoning agent, equipped with a few feelings and seven stories of feeling clusters, is able to perform a number of tasks required for functioning in the everyday world. The computer reasoning agent is called FESINA (FEeling-based Semi-INtelligent Agent). FESINA's feelings select the stories which guide her reasoning. FESINA moves around a room and senses containment from her encounters with the walls of the room. Then, when in a situation that can be perceived metaphorically as containment, she remembers how she sensed containment previously, and she uses a version of this story to look around a room to inventory its contents, or to determine what she was doing when she forgets or is sidetracked from an activity. She fills herself with food to satisfy a hunger, and recalls this story to use a version of it when she wishes to exit a room, look at an object, obtain an object, or to achieve any goal that is expressible as a want or a need. FESINA also handles obstacles. With feelings of enablement, blockage and frustration, she pushes objects out of her way and walks around immovable objects. In metaphorically related situations, she uses versions of these stories to handle visual objects and difficult actions. She also utilizes specific world knowledge to identify methods with which to handle other obstacles. She remembers retreating from an obstacle which blocked her path, and she uses a version of this story to retreat from any object she considers harmful. She also uses a version of this same story to quit a task with which she has become totally frustrated.; Her plans are stories of feelings and activity sequences. Execution of a plan is traversal of a path in a mental space. If the prerequisites of an activity are not satisfied, a feeling results that recruits stories to guide the next activity, and causes the activity needed to satisfy the prerequisites to be mapped into a newly spawned mental space. When the new activity is finished its task space is erased, and the suspended activity resumed.