Personality and the Coherent Volition Regimen: A Summary

This blog ends my eight year experiment in writing a blog and promoting it on social media. Although I have at times managed a significant readership, the social media companies don't particularly like what I'm doing. Apparently it doesn't translate into the kind of data that can be monetized.
A niche does exist today for a serious site dedicated to discovery with an interactive interface. It would, however, run counter to the massive data harvesting that characterizes social media. It would not be well understood.
Now to the summary of the previous four blogs. First, humans, animals, and smart machines all possess a coherent volition regimen (CVR), a consistent idiosyncratic manner of perception, cognition, volition, and action with feedback describing reliable patterns of cultivated behavior. This cultivated behavior, together with a priori elements, we call personality, that which makes a human a person. Dogs and robots do not, by definition, have a personality. They cannot be a person. They do have a CVR.
Essential to human social existence is the concept, the role, of moral agent, the ability to estimate and codify a successful value system and behave to it. This is beyond the capabilities of dogs and, at this point, artificial intelligence. Humans as persons are moral agents. They are alone in creation in that.
Structurally, the whole of human social existence revolves around humans as legal persons. While groups of persons, a corporation, may be treated as a legal person, no animal, no algorithm can be so considered. No robot, however capable, can be anything but a mechanical working animal, kept or owned and very likely licensed.
What dogs, humans, and smart machines are, as a common classification, are players. They game as a metaphor for social existence. They can all play games to a set of rules. They are players.
While the thought developed and expressed in these five blogs and the previous two on volition is not particularly rigorous, it has been a difficult logical puzzle to solve in a reasonable fashion. I think that I have done that and derived a common reference that differentiates among humans, animals, and robots adequately. It may prove to be valuable.
Do Well and Be Well

Personality, Player, and the Coherent Volition Regimen

'Game' occurs significantly in human descriptions and even analysis of human affairs. As described earlier in this blog series, 'game' appears to be a Kantian a priori, an unknowable thing in itself. It is here, in gameplay, that anthropomorphic errors happen frequently with respect to animals and even machines. Clever beasts can play simple games to a set of rules. Smart machines can play complex games to a set of rules. Mistakes are easy.
The focus of these mistakes is the nature of 'player', a participant in a game who, or which, is proficient in gameplay, an adept. Given the a priori nature of 'game' and the significant use of the game metaphor in human society, it is very easy to mistake player for person. Persons are human beings. Players have a capable coherent volition regimen but are not necessarily persons.
Dogs are players. Observe a clever dog playing frisbee. They are proficient at simple game play. I once kept a clever Labrador which I taught to play a rudimentary game of football (Labradors' jaws are so hinged that they can grip a football) The dog became a proficient player, an adept at the game, and even attempted to teach the game to other dogs. That is a player. That is not a person.
Smart machines are players. Observe the amazing success they have achieved in board games against expert human opponents. They are players. They are not persons.
However much animals and machines are players, however skilled their coherent volition regimen, they are not persons. They cannot estimate and codify the rules of the rules of 'game'. Therefore they cannot possibly be moral or legal persons or any person at all. They are limited to the society of dogs, a dog pack, or the society of smart machines, a scaled-out network. Human society is reserved for persons who may, in fact, keep machines and animals, both of which having roughly the same moral and legal status.
Next blog: Personality and the Coherent Volition Regimen; A Summary
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Personality, Legal Person, and the Coherent Volition Regimen

Legal Person:
An individual or group that is allowed by law to take legal action, as plaintiff or defendant. It may include natural persons as well as fictitious persons (such as corporations)

So, the derivation is personality defining person and person being eligible to be a legal person, subject to a body of law, expected to behave to those laws, and participatory in the process of the law. The body of law itself is rooted theoretically in a social contract, a negotiated quid pro quo of what I can do and can't do and what you can and can't do. The social contract, a baseline reference for rational social behavior, is only a useful fiction. The law is a living thing having many contributing factors including the possible.
Artificial intelligence, having a functional coherent volition regimen (CVR), and the machines it drives have no personality and therefore cannot be any person and definitely not a legal person. Like a dog, which also has a CVR but not a personality, it is subject to the regulation of law, especially in terms of liability, but not participatory in that process. It must be in the 'keeping' of a legal person, or owned as commonly construed, in order to rationalize liability and dangerous behavior and bring smart machines into social and legal accountability, very much as the law treats working animals.
It becomes essential on the force of this argument that we, as persons, agree on the logic that machines, as much as is economically possible, adapt to humans and not vice versa in order to empower humane social existence. We need to negotiate, as a social contract, the role of owner as that of empowered keeper, a steward of a specified domain, usually an object or enterprise, but including smart machines and real property.
On that basis, smart  machines must then, logically and legally, be in the keeping of a legal person, licensed to such a bonded person, in order to effect the redress of liabilities for wrongful action. They may be subject to licensing fees for redress of the social cost of their employment, which is to say, just as a runaway horse's keeper is liable for consequent damage, so a robot's keeper is liable for consequent socioeconomic damage. A smart machine is not a simple drill press. It is closer to a mechanical draft horse.
Next blog: Personality, Player, and the Coherent Volition Regimen
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Personality, Moral Agency, and the Coherent Volition Regimen

I am here involved in the search for differences and equivalents in human, animal, and machine psychology, to use the word loosely, in an effort to adequately place smart machines in a large context socioeconomic system. Being oriented in one's context is an essential starting point for the building of a sane mind and we cannot be sane in our employment of such machines until we can adequately place them in our context.
The topic of the first blog was personality as a special case of coherent volition regimen (CVR). Today's subject is moral agency as essentially human. What is moral agency? It is the deployment of personality into the world as directed by a codified value system, rational and irrational. A value system is the rules of the rules of a game of existence, material and social existence. However, not even humans can abstract the rules of the rules of a game from experience. According to Ludwig Wittgenstein, the logician, we can only estimate them. It appears that 'game', the rules of the rules, is a Kantian a priori.
Animals notoriously play games. They can figure out the rules of  some games. They apparently have 'game' a priori also. However, they cannot estimate the rules of the rules of a game, much less approximately codify them into a somewhat rational value system. That is what makes moral agency an essentially human role.
Artificial intelligence can also figure out the rules of a game. It can, to certain and increasing extent, explain itself. We will have to wait and see whether it can codify the rules of the rules without an a priori construct. I am betting that it can't. I am betting on human exceptionalism. However, with estimates of 1000 IQ for neural networks currently in development, the odds are close to even.
Moral agency, like language, like the opposable thumb, like the large complex brain, like the penchant for technology, is an important component of the argument for human exceptionalism. Dogs have a CVR but they cannot codify a value system. An AI robot has a CVR but it probably cannot codify a value system. We are very likely alone in that.
Next blog: Personality, Legal Persons, and the Coherent Volition Regimen
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A General Concept of Personality; the Coherent Volition Regimen

First, and make no mistake about my intent, personality is an essentially human phenomenon. Using the word properly, dogs do not have a personality. Chimps do not have a personality and, above all, machines do not have a personality. However, the consistent anthropomorphic mistakes made in reference to other creatures and even machines indicate that something like a personality is present. In this blog I am searching for that something.
What is a personality? Personality is what makes a human being a person, a special being capable of moral and legal behavior, capable of somewhat rational social existence. A personality is the specific attributes of a specific human being. In the Aristotelian construct we know as 'qua', a thing in the role of other, it is the defining characteristics of the human thing who assumes social roles in the larger construct of social existence. In a simple example, Rex, in the role of lawyer, makes his case to the jury. In the Aristotelian sense, water qua ice, Rex qua lawyer is essentially the same bundle of attributes differently configured. He has the same personality. The problem, then, is to rephrase an essentially human phenomenon so as to account for anthropomorphic errors. Let me try.
A personality is a type of 'coherent volition regimen'  (CVR) composed of idiosyncratic manners of perception, cognition, volition, and action in concert with a feedback loop so that a consistent pattern of relatively unique cultivated behavior, reasonably adaptive over time, is reliably exhibited. That does describe a personality and a coherent volition regimen.
So, dogs do have a CVR but not a personality, although much more of it is wired into their brains than humans have a priori. A robot driven by machine learning also has a CVR but not a personality. They are not persons in the grand scheme of social existence which I examine in the next three blogs.
Next: Personality, Moral Agency, and Coherent Volition Regimens
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Notes on Volition and Property

I am a behaviorist when it comes to volition. The act and the will are undifferentiated. I do not know what you intend except by what you do.
When we lack a significant commonality with another human being and, in consequence, treat them in a cavalier fashion we are said to be alienated in the vulgar if not the clinical sense of the word. I would offer a closer descriptive term. I would say that without the relational threads that compose social existence, we 'objectify' other human beings. Which is to say, we treat them as though they lack significant volition, as a stone, as a tree, as an object. And we do so as a more capable being, as a human to a dog. The dynamic resembles a behavioral hypothesis to be proved or disproved.
While I am willing to leave the why of humans doing this to psychology, I am concerned about the philosophical consequences. 'Object', as it comes into the English language from the Greek, means to present to the mind. Apparently, by so doing, it also means to include in one's social sphere with all the categories of social hierarchy. We seem to have a prejudice wired into our brains, perhaps related to fight or flight, that anything not immediately identifiable with ourselves in reliable relationships, my dog, my neighbor, your wall, is an object lacking volition until it proves otherwise, a sort of analytical xenophobia.
Thus the human need to 'know' their universe resolves as a need to establish reliable relationships with everything in that universe and that ordering inclination resolves in terms of greater and lesser volition, both cognitive horsepower and physical capability. Property then resolves as a reliable relationship, not 'possession ' as the concept has evolved, but 'keeping' as the Ancient Greeks had it.
If one removes possession from the lexicon of property, robots present an interesting problem. Soon to have the cognitive horsepower of a smart dog and the capability of significant physical action, they resolve in a complex 'keeping' relationship such as one has with a dog. In such a relationship they are eligible for licensing as a means of establishing legal liabilities and responsibilities. And if subject to licensing, they are subject to licensing fees, a new rational and valuable revenue stream.
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Property, Economic Goods, and Capital Goods: A Reflection

The taxonomy is classic, property, economic good, Capital Good. The importance of that categorical derivation is essential to economics. So, noticing a certain vague confusion concerning the nature of property, I decided, presumptuous I know, to reason into the subject a decent definition of it.
In what manner do we own anything in the philosophical sense, excluding custom or psychology and convention or law? To own something in the philosophical sense is, first, to possess more volition than it does and, second, to direct it in a reasonable fashion. I mean by volition, rational will composed of logical reflection and a consequent action. This is not the current sense of the word which is more tuned to the pragmatic, small 't', truth and consequent action, but it is the sense of the concept of property as it has come into being.
Philosophically, then, volition or the lack of it defines the category of property or what may be considered property. Law and psychology have placed serious constraints on that definition to the end of humane social existence. A stone has no volition. It must be directed if it is to 'do' anything. If I am directing the stone, say placing it into a wall, it is in my 'keeping' in the Ancient Greek sense of ownership by legitimate use. Past that 'keeping' as a philosophically sound position, property is all custom and convention. It is a dynamic concept changing from society to society and time to time.
Given this flux of meaning, how do we ascertain property in the economic sense? It is, in short, a matter of picking nits through specific custom and convention to variable conclusions. This is intolerable philosophically. So, let me continue to be cheeky and rethink the very idea of economic good.
First, significantly diverging from Marshall, the proper subject of economics is material existence, the art of being in time and space and all the objects and services that that entails but not the ideas and beliefs motivating the keeping of objects and the contracting of services, which I term custom or psychology. Psychology is psychology. Law is law. Economics is economics. Whatever valuable constructs psychology brings to the table of economic discussion, it is not germane to the subject of property,  beings with volition 'keeping' 'objects' with less volition. Law is only a constraint upon the possible in economic analysis.
The concept of property as stated above is cut and dried and clear. Even as custom and convention muddy those waters so does technology. If I deploy a robot possessed of machine learning, reason, and significant mechanical movement, action, do I, in fact, own that robot or an I contracting with it for labor services? The AI currently in development creates a serious exception to robots as Capital Goods in the philosophical sense.
The question on the table of economics is not easy to answer. It is to define the point at which robots move from object to contractor, from Capital Good to Labor Good. Society waits for the answer.
Do Well and Be Well.

The Necessity of Basic Income and Free Education

Our concept of the social responsibility for the economic well-being of individuals in our political economy is being disrupted. With the advent of globalism the very idea of separate political economies is under pressure. It is becoming clear that we must be both more generous in our societal amendments to income and education and more strict in our fiscal accountability, a neat trick I must admit.
The health  of a political economy, production, distribution, and administration, is now and will be forever measured by the comparative value of its currency in relation to world currencies in a free market. There is no absolute measure of a healthy econom, only relative health. Basically, it works or it doesn't. This series of blogs is an attempt to systematically address the black box of the allocation of wealth for socioeconomic good in the hope of rationalizing that process to achieve economic and social accountability in the political economy.
By creating an equation that measures the effect of social spending on the 'goodness' of its currency, I have created a theoretical metric measuring the abstract health of a political economy in terms of its currency without comparative valuation. It is an index useful in judging the wisdom of expenditures beyond current economics so that the politically possible will be realized efficiently and responsibly.
What of the politically possible? It is becoming conventional wisdom that our consumerist capitalist political economy cannot maintain both growth and capital concentration without priming the pump of consumer spending. The idea of a basic income is not just to replace social welfare programs but to cut to the chase of putting more money in the hands of consumers to maintain growth and the concentration of capital. As I argued earlier, a licensing fee for automation would accomplish that in a fair bargain.
While the bar to education is coming down, online schools and access to texts and explanatory materials for the autodidact, the bar in the workplace for necessary paradigms and skill sets is going up. This happy coincidence also requires monetary support in order to work. We must provide it. There has never been a period of creative destruction quite like the one we face.
And that brings me to the subject of venture capital. It is not in the nature of venture capital, a mass industrial institution, to provide funds on a substantial risk/ moderate reward basis and the only mechanism we have in place to manage this intense creative destruction is venture capital. We need to create a public venture capital corporation to fund the small bespoke factories of the future and their economic infrastructure on a breakeven basis. Faced with the social default of meaningless existence, we must assert our better nature, our life force, and move ahead into a world of possibility and meaning.
Thank You Kind Readers,
Do Well and Be Well

Bespoke Production: The Humane Resolution of Mass Industrialism

Blog 3

What I am calling Value Dilution Economics is based upon the observation that when one leverages their economy, whether with Keynesian mechanics or supply side mechanics, one either overcooks their economy or overcooks their society and dilutes either the value of money or the quality of their social existence. It is a very reliable and historically evident relationship. We are now moving into the Age of Productivity, a smart-machine enhanced manufacturing process and a smart-machine enhanced distribution system. What will that entail? First, some attempt must be made to envision what this economy will look like and, second, how can it be managed to a humane end? Certainly, unless one defines civilization as a death cult where machines do all the work and we lay around taking drugs and watching bad television, it must be managed. We must direct the machine and not the other way around. Certainly, it must be to a humane end. We must enhance social existence, nothing less makes any sense whatsoever.
While there are a number of areas of intense research and development, three stand out as pointing the way to a humane society.
 Artificial intelligence has the capacity to enhance human existence, both economic and social,  by handling the mundane, tedious, details and protocols that harass us and devour our time.
Derivative of artificial intelligence are robots, even autonomous, thinking robots, those fearsome, delightful inventions.
Third, there are 3D printers, now even capable of placing metal in computer defined patterns, that can build intricate objects. Using these three elements I envision a humane factory as follows:
The human factor- a clever resourceful person of some mechanical insight.
The AI factor- a production manager, a business manager, a marketing manager, all under the direction of the human factor.
The robot factor-  assembly robots, AI driven, able to learn new tasks reasonably quickly, capable and flexible.
The 3D printer- industrial 3D machines that can make intricate parts to exacting specifications for robot assembly.
 The criteria for a Bespoke factory is- can it make an assembly robot with minimal outside components? Can it make a 3D printer with minimal outside components? That autonomous capability is beyond mass industrialism. It is the mark of the Age of Productivity.
The scheme for the Age of Productivity is simple:
There are factories. There are virtual markets matching production and sales. There are brokers directing AI assistants staffing those markets. There are AI enhanced points of sale. There are human consumers whose income is enhanced by a basic income, whose free education is AI enhanced.
If POM + POS generate z amount of dollars minus reasonable net profit then expenditures on education, basic income, and government equal z amount of dollars minus net profit. Of course, that's theoretical. Deviations would be normal.
This gives an x=5 equation for Value Dilution Economics. That is:
(POM+POS)/(education+basic income+ government+2)= .4 as value dilution factor
The value dilution is high because the Age of Productivity reduces human access to value addition, to the simple creation of wealth, in POM and POS. It necessarily is weighted to social utility as:
(money in circulation)(.4)= 'goodness`  of currency
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Next Blog:
The Necessity of Basic Income and Free Education in the Age of Productivity

The Analytical Basis of a Humane Economy: A Speculation

Blog 2

It is necessary in proposing a new analytical model to show critical failure in the old model [Kuhn, 1967]. How hard is that with classic economics? 1872,1929, 2008. It's a piece of cake. It is not that those catastrophes occurred. It is that they were unexpected and in each case complex market interventions were required to keep the factories running,
The problem is not capitalism. If markets did not exist, we would invent them. Talent is a naive concept. It exists in the mind long before it is recognized in the person. That economic talent would be graced with unequal reward is intuitive. Likewise the essential arbitrage relationship, that greater risk requires greater reward, is very real and very human. Capitalism, in itself, is humane in the sense that it is all too human. We are too clever by half for our own good and we have win/lose outcomes wired into our cells. Capitalism is not the problem. It is the myopia of the economic analysis.
That analysis, in the process of utilizing available technology, has created our productivity driven mass industrialism with its aggregate demand and GDP. It is by these metrics definitely not human scale. It is by definition, in terms of any specific individual, not humane. Throw in the machines that make it go and the fact that its mechanisms manage to reduce humans to minions of the automated machine process and it is not incidentally inhumane. It is actually hostile. So, how do we characterize and analyze economic behavior so as to create a humane economy? Here is my speculative, somewhat naive, try:

Value Dilution Economics
There are two major aspects to economic behavior and, while each is perfectly comfortable with classic economics and accounting, the relationship of the two, production and distribution, is imperfectly expressed in the current model. To correct this, I propose two theoretical units, Point of Manufacture, POM, the point that the product leaves the factory, and Point of Sale, POS, the point that the product is in the possession of the end consumer. The number of socioeconomic sectors, education, basic income etc, between POM and POS I label x.
Arbitrarily I give each POM and POS a numeric value of 1. I then write the equation:
          (POM + POS) / x = y
y is the dilution factor of the 'goodness' of the money used in all the transactions. Obviously, the value of y will fall between 1 and 0. Why do this? Because money, a value calculus allowing the comparative valuation of disparate products and services in a market, has only economic value. The social utility of economic activity varies inversely with its economic utility. Using money for its social utility dilutes its value much as putting too much in circulation does.
A humane economy has a target value of .5 because any greater number will be excessive economic utility and any lesser number will be excessive social utility. It is a matter of plugging this equation in across all transactions to calculate the goodness of a currency.
Material existence, the stuff of economics, lasts around 75 years at best. Social existence is the stuff of eternity. It only makes sense to balance social utility and economic utility and it makes absolutely no sense to do otherwise.
Do Well and Be Well.

Nest Blog:
Bespoke Production and the Humane Economy

Technology and Venture Capital in a Humane Economy

Blog 1
Introduction

We live in an age of humanist defeatism. We are surrendering the human joy of making to the machine and have been for centuries. Consistently the only objection is the lack of a safety net to dislocation. The only justification is productivity increase and the context is always mass industrialism. We need to sequence from mass industrialism to bespoke production and this needs to be done in a humane manner to a humane end. It is the object of this blog to argue that human exceptionalism is expressed in the concept of talent; that markets reward talent; that no autonomous machine economy, and that becomes ever more possible with AI, could be legitimate in the sense that human economies, serving human material existence and by doing that, serving the totality of human existence, social, spiritual, and intellectual in a sustainable harmony with all that exists, can be legitimate.
It is necessary and becoming increasingly urgent that we rationalize the process of innovation, that we manage change, in order to remain valuable, meaningful beings. Capitalism is a system in which, incidental to 'moving' plenty to scarcity by the mechanisms of market and price, rewards vision and talent by the allocation of resources, land and capital in classic taxonomy, to them. Consumerism, which is Keynesian in its emphasis on increasing aggregate demand, is a variation of pure capitalism. The legalization of the printed form installment loan contract is a market intervention, not an evolution of markets. It is also a condition of existence here in the United States, institutionalized and legitimized by  usage. It is not subject to repeal. It is the mainspring that drives the mechanism of our disneyland economy created by the exigencies of mass industrialism and, in order to maintain the integrity of that economy, must be honored in terms of value and consideration by income earned in the addition of value in the production and distribution market system.
I am not arguing for economic determinism in the nature of the human soul. I am simply saying that economic prestige figures in both self-esteem and healthy cognition. I am saying that the pursuit of the next logical step in technology is opening the deep chasm of meaningless existence that stands between us and the proper employment of technology. We must direct the machine with wisdom and not let it direct us in order to cross that chasm. In short, I am arguing that reclassifying robots as a hybrid Capital Good/Labor, a labor good, and licensing their deployment but not their development would pay the social cost of their use in an honest bargain and rationalize both economics and innovation.
Do Well and Be Well

Next Blog:  A Speculation on a Humane Technological Economy

Shifting Paradigms: Idiosyncratic Social Existence

There are two modes of human social existence, normative and eccentric. These two categories of social behavior are exhaustive and mutually exclusive. There are no others.
The excessive influence of mass industrialism on social organization has led the bulk of humanity into a normative existence, the factory whistle, the same television program, date and time, the same movies, the same week, and the same bestselling books all generating norms of thought, language, and perception. Eccentric social behavior has been left to outliers whose outsider status has led to valuable science, philosophy, and art. This is changing. This grand cultural monolith of normative values is eroding into what I call personal psychological spaces that necessarily generate eccentric social behavior in the pursuit of idiosyncratic social existence. Eccentricity is becoming the norm.
The culprit in this normative cultural decay is consumerism. It is no surprise that the leading critics of this economic orientation of consumption are neoMarxists, the philosophy of the masses. As niche production and niche marketing have come into play, technology has kept pace, gadgets tied to product ecosystems such as the Amazon Fire, functioning as a vending machine or jukebox depending on the product, filter bubbles made possible by the internet, and a renaissance of indie publishing, books and blogs done digitally.
It is the role of philosophy in normative social existence to define the thinkable, appropriate cognitive patterns, catalog reliable perceptions under specific paradigms (science), and provide rigorous language for the communication of ideas. It is essential to the practice of philosophy that one says this, this way, because to say something in other words is to say something else. If one doesn't understand the language specific to an idea, one doesn't understand the idea. The term currently used is theory laden.
The role of philosophy in eccentric social systems such as exist in individualistic attempts at social behavior, idiosyncratic social existence, is essentially different. It is to provide paradigms and rules that may be shared by individuals in their specific circumstance or psychological space. Without such common ground, those psychological spaces are significantly incommensurable and communication rudimentary and trivial. It is the essence of eccentric social existence to master paradigms and rules in order to say this (idea) about that (perception) in an intelligible manner.
As consumerism erodes the mass monolith, the importance of paradigms, and not one True paradigm but rather a repertoire of paradigms and theory laden terms, will be increasingly apparent. It is the proper place of philosophy to systematically address that need.
Do Well and Be Well.

Writing Sentences: The Process

Analyze the nature of what the writer does in just writing a sentence. A sentence is a problem in lexicon, syntax, and idea which must be solved simultaneously for all three, word by word, in order to build a linguistic construct that moves plot and develops character or perhaps is a bon mot. It has to 'fit' into the sentences before it while defining the creative space of the ones that follow.
And it has to make sense in itself and to a larger reality. I once did an independent exercise in writing iambic pentameter. I can write rhyming verse in that meter. I can make sense within each line and to the whole of the piece. I cannot do both simultaneously and consistently. Being able to do that, being Shakespeare, is what we call writing talent. It is what separates the interesting scribble from Art.
 I am not amazed at the complexity of the writing process but I am amazed that any human can do it.
Do Well and Be Well.