[Author’s Note: This is a working paper. I am starting this at 5 pm, Saturday, December 27, 2025, as a continuation of my creation of a computational structure that can moralize artificial intelligence. The work up to this point in time is found and frozen in “Boundaries in the Temporal Rights Hierarchy.” That was the working paper for this project that started March 21, 2025. It ended with a structure for the higher animals which can be found there.]

The following computational structure for AI morality is not based on rules extracted from anything other than the laws of nature.

All of the versions artificial intelligence can use this in the human domain.

In Physics we find that the most interesting phenomena occur at boundaries between two states or two substances. A stone and mortar wall consists of two very hard, stable, and persistent materials, but the strength of the wall depends entirely upon what is not happening at the boundary between them. That’s where the rubber meets the road (another boundary condition). The fact that the boundary exists draws attention to where it belongs when we are considering the issue of strength. We should expect to see a similar condition when we explore operators’ boundaries of their natural rights. Because a capability identifies a corresponding natural right, I have constructed a hierarchy of rights by logically analyzing their corresponding capabilities and have placed them in order of precedence according to their intrinsic value along the spectrum of natural law, beginning with existence at the highest level.

The Hierarchy Can Moralize AI

These statements describe boundaries between, or at least different levels of operators’ powers, and present a method of ordering their value relative to one another. These values inform the value system that can moralize artificial intelligence.

The Temporal Rights framework of natural rights provides the basis for this computational morality. The following natural hierarchy of those rights provides an existential value system based on the laws of nature. The link connecting these two systems is the principle that the unnecessary or excessive violation of natural rights is evil, while maximizing recognition, protection, and advancement of natural rights is good. If you can think of an evil that is not a violation of those rights, please inform me at the bottom of this essay.

Needs and Rights

One fact that complicates this effort to define a rational and provable hierarchy is the interplay between states and actions. This creates a logical trap that derails clear thinking, so please be careful while you evaluate the following. If you want to derive rights from states, be my quest but I will say you are not identifying rights but entitlements, which are much more difficult to precisely identify and isolate. Hence, my focus is on capabilities.

The most fundamentally required state is freedom, liberty to act, to utilize inherent powers with their intrinsic authority. This is an existential consideration, so it gives rise to a corresponding natural right: the right to operate. Please note that this is erroneous logic in that it derived a right from a state rather than from a power/capability!

Needs are the requirements for continuing existence and for flourishing. They present a spectrum from basic for existence to basic for flourishing. It seems that we can draw a line, albeit fuzzy, between existence and flourishing. It seems helpful to imagine a person in a really bad prison, where “bad” helps us see this fuzzy line. (In passing, we can note that “bad” could be replaced by “evil” because a bad prison is where most human rights are thoroughly thwarted.)
Even bad prisons will usually provide the existence needs, but that is all.
We can easily convert these needs to entitlements, which, unfortunately, are often expressed as “rights,” a usage we will avoid.
The distinguishing aspect that separates needs and rights is that rights are the existential authority aspect of capabilities/actions, whereas needs are more or less necessary states/circumstances.

Deducing a Value System from the Hierarchy

The boundary conditions of this hierarchy are particularly interesting because they dramatize the power of the Temporal Rights paradigm to administer justice in an organized, articulated, and revealed way. The following statements show the natural ascendancy of rights.

You can exist without living, but you can’t live without existing.
You can live without thinking, but you can’t think without living.
Etc.

These statements describe boundaries between, or at least different levels of operators’ powers, and present us with a method of grading their value relative to one another. They are comparisons that show the ascendency, importance, and value of one capability over another. These values become the value spectrum of the morality we hope to instill in artificial intelligence.

A Hierarchy of Human Natural Rights

This is the logic of the hierarchy. Comments on individual statements follow.

1. A person can exist.
2. A person can exist without living, but they can’t live without existing.
3. A person can live without sensing, but they can’t live very long without sensing.
4. A person can sense without acting, but they can’t act without sensing.
5. A person can act without acquiring, but they can’t acquire without acting.
6. A person can acquire without consuming, but they can’t consume without acquiring.
7. A person can consume without learning, but they can’t learn without consuming.
8. A person can learn without remembering, but they can’t remember without learning.
9. A person can remember without cooperating, but they can’t cooperate without remembering.
10. A person can cooperate without bonding, but they can’t bond without cooperating.
11. A person can bond without reproducing, but they can’t reproduce without bonding.
12. A person can reproduce by cooperating.

To facilitate comprehension, here is the hierarchy in tabular form.

The first column of this logic table shows the complete hierarchy.

Comments on the Hierarchy Table

As expected, the first and last rows of the table, being at the boundaries of the hierarchy, seem strained and awkward. Row one is like a person trying to pull himself up by the bootstraps and indeed that is what it is. “Existing without living” refers to an unfertilized ovum and sperm cells, both of which qualify as operators and therefore have natural rights to exist. These are a potential person in a pre-living or living state depending on how you want to define “living”. Definitions are just crucial tools, after all.

The last row has a similar problem to the first row in that it is not a comparison but it seems completely appropriate as it stands. It is fascinating to me to find that the hierarchy beings and ends with reproduction. The world was created for reproduction: “multiply and replenish the earth.”

Clarifications

Aquiring must be understood to include retaining ownership or it collapses into a perfunctory act.

Sensing includes all the senses, and they might be further separated. This also includes data from any information source. The “can’t act without sensing” should be understood to mean “can’t act appropriately without sensing”, where appropriate relates at least to the continued existence of the person

I note that sensed information needs to be both accurate and timely, but those are not capabilities. We need accurate news channels, but they are not part of our abilities. Information corrupted by adulteration or by affective delay leads to inappropriate or even dangerous actions. There is a good argument for an entitlement here.

“Learning without remembering” means learning and forgetting.

“Can’t reproduce without bonding” is an established fact where reproduction is done in the natural way with prolonged bodily intimacy. Modern technology makes this statement only conditionally correct which explains why many of us feel uncomfortable with surrogate reproduction. The table addresses natural capabilities and their attendant rights. Does that mean that this existential morality cannot adequately address the moral issues of surrogacy?

Perhaps, or maybe the fact that it cannot be addressed by natural logic proves that it is a bad practice because it exposes the fact that natural operators, humans, are operating outside their natural domain and are therefore in undefined territory and will suffer undefined and/or dangerous consequences. “Don’t mess with mother nature!” comes to mind along with the many lessons we have learned the hard way when we did mess with her. We have a right to learn but we also have the dangerous power to ignore.

The AI Morality Algorithm

I haven’t yet coded this algorithm as it has been over 20 years since I wrote and computer code. But my 40 years analyzing, coding, and documenting information systems assures me that this is not going to be a difficult problem. The difficulty will arise in the process of identifying the appropriate level of capability before crawling the hierarchy. But I believe that the present expertise of LLMs is sufficiently capable of making that choice. If that method is utilized, there will need to be checks and stops.

Crawling the Hierarchy

Let’s try a test case: a burglar steals a car. The burglar violated the victim’s rights at level 6, acquisition/ownership, so this is a level 6 violation (whatever that is going to mean). This is how the system converts existential facts into a morality with some finesse.

I feel pretty good about the hierarchy as a first whack at it, now I’ve got to play with it to see how it works.

Disclaimer

Lest I commit plagiarism, I hereby depose and state that I am not the auhor of the ideas, principles, and insights recorded here or in any of my writings on the topics of Temporal Rights and Morality. I will state that I volunteered to do this work, but that is the extent of any credit that should of right come to me. The Temporal Rights paradigm came to me as an immediate anwer to prayer in 1976. The other insights, principles, and methodologies came to me in similar fashion, some attended with small miracles described in How Temporal Rights Came to Me. I am not the author, but I am the scribe.