Motivation And Intentionality In A Computer Simulation Model Of Paranoia

This dissertation describes a computer simulation model of paranoia. The model mimics the behavior of a patient participating in a psychiatric interview by answering questions, introducing its own topics, and responding to negatively-valued (e. g., threatening or shame-producing) situations. The work focuses on the motivational mechanisms required to instigate and direct the modelled behavior. Major components of the model are: (1) A production system (PS) formalism accounting for the instigation and guidance of behavior as a function of internal (affective) and external (real-word) environmental factors; (2) A model of affects (emotions) as an anticipation mechanism based on a small number of basic pain-pleasure factors; and (3) a formalism for intensional behavior (directed by internal models) requiring a dual representation of symbol and concept. An intensional object (belief) can be accessed either by sensing it in the environment (concept) or by its name (token). Similarly, an intensional action (intention) can be specified either by its conditions in the immediate environment (concept) or by its name (token). Issues of intelligence, psychopathological modelling, and artificial intelligence programming are discussed. The paranoid phenomenon is found to be explainable as an extremely skewed use of normal processes. Applications of these constructs are found to be useful in AI programs dealing with error recovery, incompletely specified input data, and natural language specification of tasks to perform.

This book presents a new structural approach to the psychology of the person, inspired by Kenneth Colby’s computer-generated simulation, PARRY. The simulation was of a paranoid psychological state, represented in forms of the person's logic and syntax, as these would be evidenced in personal communication. Harwood Fisher uses a Structural View to highlight similarities in the logical form of the linguistic representations of Donald Trump, his avid followers (“Trumpers”), and the paranoid—referred to as “The Trio.” He demonstrates how the Structural View forms a series of logical and schematic patterns, similar to the way that content analysis can bring forth associations meanings, and concepts held in the text. Such comparisons, Fisher argues, can be used to shed light on contingencies for presenting, representing, and judging truth. Specifically, Fisher posits that the major syntactic and logical patterns that were used to produce the computer-generated “paranoid” responses in Colby’s project can be used to analyze Donald Trump’s rhetoric and his followers’ reactions to it. Ultimately, Fisher offers a new kind of structural approach for the philosophy of psychology. This novel work will appeal to students and scholars of social and cognitive psychology, psychology of personality, psychiatric classification, psycholinguistics, rhetoric, and computer science.

This book is intended for cognitive psychologists and students studying psychology.

Artificial Paranoia: A Computer Simulation of Paranoid Processes is a seven-chapter book that begins by explaining the concept, characteristics, and theories of paranoia. Subsequent chapters focus on the explanations, models, and symbol-processing theory of the paranoid mode. Another chapter explores language-recognition processes for understanding dialogues in teletyped psychiatric interviews. The last three chapters explore the central processes of the model, validation, and evaluation.