Emotion and Satisficing Engineering

Abstract

Emotion has been considered to be noises in our traditional engineering because it is situation-dependent and fluctuates very much. But today situations come to change very often and extensively so that it is very difficult to make decisions on a rational basis. If we remember that global optimization is achieved utilizing fluctuations and if we note that AI programs such as the one described by Prolog manages the processing sequence based on verbs, and that verbs are very closely related with our motions, which relates to emotions as etymology indicates. Thus, emotion plays a very important role in our decision making. Although our world is expanding very quickly, the distance and width we can see or what we can experience are limited. Thus Simon’s idea of “satisficing” or “satisfied enough” becomes very important. “Satisfied enough” is nothing other than emotion. Therefore, tomorrow’s engineering must consider emotion as a very important factor in our product development, because everybody has his or her own perspective of the Open Word, or “My World”. He or she makes decisions from the standpoint of My World. Thus, products must be designed and developed to meet expectations which originate from My World.