Damasio is very good on how feelings, emotions and consciousness influence each other:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32335976-the-strange-order-of-things

I missed this reply before, Kev. Sorry!

I think my reply to Pat below covers it.

Thanks!
The concept of artificial emotions is interesting. I suppose humans have a biological imperative (being “hangry”, for instance), and we “feel” the emotions. I’ll have to think more on this. See you and the group later. We should also have a T-shirt to go with the tagline.

Hi Pat! Thanks for stopping by!

That’s an interesting take about Tyrion caring (maybe we can cover this at Café Philo tonight when we talk about The Self).

My initial reaction is that caring and knowing are different things. I can know something without caring about it, for example. The computer can too. The computer’s inability to care does not affect its ability to know.

My second thought is that computer scientists have focused so far on building
artificial intelligence. They haven’t tried building artificial emotions yet but one day they will and then computers will be able to care as well as think.

We should try to persuade Phil to adopt Tyrion’s phrase as a tagline for Café Philo “We drink and we know things.” See you tonight!

PS. I deleted the other comment. This one went through fine.

I believe Tyrion drinks because too many of the things he knows suck.

The things he knows affect him emotionally. The facts and events and events he knows about have metaphysical meaning for him (meaning over and above their potential cause-and-effect), and in turn his emotions are affected by the metaphysical meaning he perceives. To salve his emotions, he drinks wine. This may have help by giving him wine goggles to change his perception, or give him the relief of forgetfulness.

TLDR: Tyrion differs from AI because he cares. His wellbeing is affected if he perceives what he cares about is in danger, and also affected if things suck in general. He self-medicates with wine to forget or to change his perception of the level of suckiness.