If Then Do Emotions

(1) Why do humans have emotions? What evolutionary advantage did/does it give us, if any?

"We are all ruled in what we do by impulses; and these impulses are so organized that our actions in general serve for our self preservation and that of the race. Hunger, love, pain, fear are some of those inner forces which rule the individual's instinct for self preservation. At the same time, as social beings, we are moved in the relations with our fellow beings by such feelings as sympathy, pride, hate, need for power, pity and so on."
-Albert Einstein, 1950

The origin and advantages of human emotion –biologically, neurologically and evolutionary- is an undeniably longer and more complex explanation than the simplified interpretation I can give here, however, I will do my best to sum up with a few of the more amusing examples I could find by people who know more than I do.

Our emotions give us the ability to think in a certain way, while ignoring facts that might otherwise prevent us from executing a task.

Minsky makes some keen observations on love/infatuation:

"Hear our friend Charles attempt to describe his latest infatuation.

"I've just fallen in love with a wonderful person. I scarcely can think about anything else. My sweetheart is unbelievably perfect — of indescribable beauty, flawless character, and incredible intelligence. There is nothing i would not do for her."

On the surface such statements seem positive; they're all composed of superlatives. But note that there's something strange about this: most of those phrases of positive praise use syllables like "un," "less," and "in" — which show that they really are negative statements describing the person who's saying them!

Wonderful. Indescribable.
— (I can't figure out what attracts me to her.)
I scarcely can think of anything else.
— (Most of my mind has stopped working.)
Unbelievably perfect. Incredible.
— (No sensible person believes such things.)
She has a flawless character.
— (I've abandoned my critical faculties.)
There is nothing i would not do for her.
— (I've forsaken most of my usual goals.)"

Minsky's observations explain how emotions shape Ways to think by either adding or taking away mental critics. Without certain critics being shut off finding a mate would become even more of a challenge than it already is.
Also of note is how this emotional state coincides with the way popular locations for courtship include low lighting and alcohol.
Minsky is aware of, but doesn't mention norepinephrine, the hormone that produces the excitement that comes during the first states of love, because in doing so he would have to leave the structural understanding and begin a new chapter to explain the biological origins of emotion.
Humans developed emotions in order to distinguish situations and prepare ways to react to or think about what mood is demanded by or would best fit those situations.
Is this a predator? Is this a mate? Will watching Faux News make me angry?
When anger and fear shut off the critics that recognize another person as “human” we get results like the one seen in the Critical Mass video.
The amygdala perform primary roles in the formation and storage of memories associated with emotional events such as these, which leads us into the debate on whether or not robots will develop this type of response.

(2) Is it not possible/probable that robotic lifeforms will also develop emotions as their complexity develops? In other words, could not emotion be a inexorable byproduct of--or necessary component of-- abstract reasoning and creativity?

I’ve already taken up enough of your time, so I will try to keep this short.
Robots/AI do not have hormones, amygdala, limbic systems and other hardware the brain uses to process emotions. Instead a series of programs and sensors are used to interpret the world logically.
How would you explain to a robot what "cool" is?
Machines have a predisposition to logic but not necessarily common sense, and because I don’t believe in the ‘ghost in the machine’ I would have to assume that if emotions were to develop in Robots/AI it would be through complex programming, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility.
I would agree that emotions have a hand in creativity and imagination.
For instance, say someone was working late on a term paper and begins to fall asleep. This person might imagine a scenario where the class would have to be repeated due to the failing mark of an unfinished paper. The abstract thinking will stir emotion which will help keep this person awake.
A robot would recognize the low power level and simply plug into the wall.
Unique results in creativity and imagination don't necessarily come from emotion as much as they come from, to put it plainly, insanity:
Taking objects, ideas, scenarios, stories, and reconfiguring them, mashing them together, inverting them, and so on.
This behaviour is part chaos and random and part order, and also can presumably be replicated through complex programming.