The Self-Alignment Framework (SAF) is a closed-loop ethical architecture composed of five interdependent faculties: Values, Intellect, Will, Conscience, and Spirit. These components function as a moral system, enabling human and artificial agents to act with integrity, coherence, and long-term ethical stability.
1. Values – The Moral Foundation
Definition: Values are the unchanging ethical standards that define what is right, good, or just within a system. In SAF, they are externally declared and internally upheld.
Practical Role: Values serve as the “set point” of the ethical system. All reasoning begins here. In an AI context, they are defined by the institution or user, and govern what the system is ultimately aiming to preserve or promote.
Implementation Note: Values must be clear, declarative, and traceable. Ambiguous or selectively applied values undermine the integrity of the entire loop.
2. Intellect – Ethical Reasoning in Action
Definition: Intellect interprets situations in light of the value set and provides reasoned judgments. It balances logic, context, and ethical interpretation.
Practical Role: Intellect translates values into reasoned responses. It generates hypotheses, considers implications, and identifies options that align with ethical constraints.
In Practice: In SAFi, Intellect is implemented via GPT-4o. It is guided by structured prompts that reference the active value set, and it produces an ethical response followed by a brief moral reflection.
3. Will – The Gatekeeper of Moral Action
Definition: Will is the faculty that acts. It decides whether to accept or reject what Intellect has proposed.
Practical Role: Will adds moral agency to the system. It prevents automatic behavior and ensures that decisions are intentionally aligned with values.
In SAFi: Will It evaluates the final response generated by Intellect and determines whether it aligns with the declared value set. If misalignment is detected—such as justification of morally conflicting viewpoints—Will blocks the output and returns a warning message. If the response is aligned, it allows it to pass through.
This gives SAFi the ability to not just reason—but to act responsibly.
4. Conscience – The Independent Ethical Feedback System
Definition: Conscience evaluates actions or outputs against the original value set. It flags misalignments and confirms coherence.
Practical Role: Conscience is SAF’s internal review mechanism. It provides granular ethical assessment by comparing the system’s output to each declared value, offering both affirmation levels and confidence scores.
In SAFi: Conscience operates independently from all other faculties. It uses the prompt, the final output from the Will, and the Intellect’s reflection to generate a structured evaluation of how well each value was upheld or violated. This feedback is essential for transparency, accountability, and continuous improvement.
5. Spirit – The Guardian of Long-Term Coherence
Definition: Spirit is the emergent faculty that reflects on the system as a whole. It tracks moral drift, integrity over time, and holistic alignment.
Practical Role: Spirit sees the ethical journey, not just the ethical moment. It captures how often values are upheld or violated based on the feedback from the Conscience, and keeps track of alignment trends.
In SAFi: Spirit grabs the confidence score from the Conscience and averages them out in a 1–10 scale to get an average Spirit score. It also captures all the feedback from the other faculties including the Intellect output and final output approved by the Will, and logs it into a file (e.g., saf-spirit-log.json).
Final Note: Why this Loop Matters
These components do not function in isolation. Each depends on the others:
- Without Values, Intellect has no direction.
- Without Intellect, Will is blind.
- Without Will, ethics never becomes action.
- Without Conscience, there is no correction.
- Without Spirit, there is no memory, no growth, and no soul.
The power of SAF lies in the loop—in the continuous ethical conversation between these faculties. It is my strong belief that this structure reflects the human soul itself, which is inherently moral.
SAF is not just a model. It is an architecture for alignment—in AI, in institutions, and in the human person.