Is emotion necessary for intelligence to be present?

no, given that you can make a robot and provide it with analaysis of infinite situations and a tactical response, it can function with deductive and inductive reasoning. thus it would be intelligent.

Thank you, I was waiting for someone to bring that up. There are robots which have the capacity to learn but their learning eventually hits a plateu, because although they are designed to learn the world around them they can only learn according to the stimulus provided. Although they can be inteligent if the stimulus is already understood then there is no further drive to learn unless that drive is programmed by the one who controls the "intelect" of said robot.

And no problem Jane, you are very welcome!

LOL...

Well, not get rid of, just consider what the human condition would be like in the absence of emotion. I agree, emotions are the contrast to the black and white of pure logic, they give meaning and gravity to our experiences, perceptions, and dreams (and/or goals).

Quiteman, I didn't mean to ignore your recommendations. I did look at them and they are indeed enlightening. There is still more to read, as I merely looked through the abridged versions (thank you wikipedia). However, you are correct, this isn't inherently a discussion of facts as I am speculating on the condition of the human intelligence without the presence of emotion.
I will refer back to one of your suggested reads from Freud regarding the ego, super ego and id. In this example we would be removing the Super Ego and id, leaving only the ego (very roughly speaking) to calculate and interpret the world. The ego being the aspect to balance the self interested id and overly moral super ego. The question then becomes is the ego ultimately doing anything at all if it no longer needs to balance the other two aspects of the mind? Would(could) the ego maintain its own "level-headedness" or would(could) it create conflict in an attempt to reassert the necessary balance?

Although, through experimentations, it might be possible creating a stndadized set of stimulations -- to provoke a certain response -- most of people tend to react differently to various stimili...
Thus, an "Emotional Gun" would not be practical!

lol.. Very true!

Experincing the GOODness is impossible without awareness of the BADness!

Our senses are pretty much hardwired to interact with centers of the brain that deal with emotion. For example, a particular scent or odor can create a sense of well-being, contentment or evoke a strong fear response. Certain music can lull us to sleep, while other music can stir anger and resentment.

It seems that we are hard-wired to emotional areas of the brain because survival instinct requires a deep, nearly instantaneous, connection to our emotions to elicit a survival response.

Similarly, we cruise through the day on auto-pilot allowing heuristics (a kind of cognitive short-cut) to make our decisions for us. Oddly enough, by using heuristics we are allowed to by-pass emotional thought processes, and instead we rely on previous experience from which past emotional responses are unconsciously inserted into a formula making us behave as we do.

Either way, emotion played a role in our decisions and affected our actions. So the question is: would it be possible to replace our current use of ‘emotionally based’ heuristics with ‘logically based’ responses?

I think a great deal of what we have learned, that is – how we have learned, to respond may be overridden and in some cases reversed from the emotional to the logical. However, we have to remember that all humans have some level of functional emotions, but not all humans have the knowledge, skills, and characteristics required to function in a constantly aware and thoughtful state.

In Star Trek, the Vulcan’s (remember Mr. Spock) supposedly bred out emotions, but when faced with situations in which a human made a decision based on emotion, the Vulcans became confused, because the action was not logical. When we think logically we often leave behind compassion and empathy – to do so on a regular basis would eventually lead to actions that are harmful to others.

I think we need to reason within a state of emotion, I think we need to include emotion in our heuristic processes, and I think both are necessary functions to sociability and ultimately to our survival. But we can, in some cases surpass our training and become more aware of our presence in the now and consider our interaction with it from a state of logic.

Redykeulous:
Not if "Harming others" would be postulated as "MOST ILLOGICAL"!!!

One can act in ways that lead to harming others no matter if the thoughts are logically or emotionally guided.

Without the Intention of causing harm to others, logical or emotional thoughts are harmless!!!

People often make the mistake of thinking that good intensions only yield good outcomes. This is an old philosophical debate and I would say the outcome of that debate is that intension does not always direct the good or bad outcome of actions.

Creative is right, of course, and nowhere can we get a better understanding of his reply than through the philosophical mind challenges offered by Isaac Asimov as he imagines a world in which Robots think and act according to a strong moral and ethical and logical Robotic Law.

The laws Asimov attempted to lay down from which Robots would make “logical” decisions included fail-safe instructions and his tests, his stories, became quite a lengthy philosophical endeavor. If we could be trained to by-pass our emotional connections then we might need to concentrate on learning the proper way to evaluated situations throughout our life by utilizing the final Robotic Laws.

Yeah! Hey, why don't you speak out against ill-informed and half-baked 'stoner talk' more often? These threads are littered with such.

Call me a 'hard science' elitist, but I'm not convinced that most of the last couple hundred years of this research has that much value. This is just my opinion, but too much of the older work was speculative and strongly influenced by personal philosophies.

It seems to me that as we progress, psychology becomes more deeply rooted in 'hard science' fields like neurology...I look forward to what the future holds.

I deliberately numbered the statements of the dialogue -- to make it easy for your indicating What particular statement your referring to by saying "Creative is right, of course..."

*** I mentioned NOTHING about GOOD intentions -- some of which may, at times, cause the oposite outcome -- I was talking only about logical or emotional thoughts!
(((Nevertheless, nothing Good can be expected from Bad intentions!!!)))

* So, would you, please, clarify What are you referring to when saying "Creative is right, of course"? ? ?