Common-Currency Scalar (the Scalar)

Canonical definition

The Common-Currency Scalar is the single signed subjective-value quantity that the Decision Hub emits for a focal Object by Common-Currency Integration of the Appetitive, Intrinsic and Mimetic inputs (Axiom 2), and on whose sign and magnitude action-selection runs: a positive value selects approach, a negative value selects avoidance, and a value near zero selects disengagement (Signed Valuation Principle). The Scalar is written U(x) where it is indexed by the option or Object x, as in the AIM Integration Equation, and V(t) where it is a state variable of the fast dynamics, as in Appendix A; the two notations name the same quantity, and the choice between them follows the context in which the Scalar is being evaluated. The Scalar is emitted after the integration step has destroyed the source tags, so no downstream process, introspection included, can recover from it the A, I or M composition that produced it (Source Opacity, Axiom 3). The Scalar is the felt urge to act, and it is the action-selection decision variable: each emission resolves at action-selection, and the deficit that produced it re-emits it for as long as the deficit goes uncorrected, so the urge stands while the deficit stands and ends when the Action completes or the deficit closes. Phenomenal Affect is the joint product of the same integration event, the felt state emitted alongside the urge, and the two differ in what becomes of them: the Scalar spends itself in the body's output and leaves no standing object behind, whereas Phenomenal Affect converts to nothing and persists, which is what gives the Thinker a standing object to examine. The Scalar converts inward, through the Thinker's Ground-Resolution, to an item of Evidence, and outward to Action, and the Action is its transduction: the Scalar is put into a medium in which it can act on the Object it selected, and that Object then carries the signal onward, to whatever gates it and to whatever the Individual does with it, until the deficit that emitted the Scalar is discharged. Where the selected Object is held by another Individual, the transducing Action is exchange, and the Object that exchange leaves behind carries the Scalar across the interval and between bodies. An Object's efficiency at carrying it is its Saleability, and Money is the Object at the top of that gradient: the same Scalar, once transduced by exchange, on the substrate that carries it for every Individual and every deficit at once (Money; Chapter 12).