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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