Coherent Blended Volition is a recent concept coined in a 2012 paper by Ben Goertzel with the aim to clarify his Coherent Aggregated Volition idea.
When discussing machine ethics and the extrapolation of human values for use in AGIs, CAV appears to the author as being easily misinterpreted, with a confusion emerging between aggregation and averaging. This misinterpretation is then clarified through CBV, which suggests instead a “conceptual blend” – a term borrowed from Fauconnier and Tunner’s works exploring creativity (2002) - between different values and perspectives. This would allow for an harmonious and elegant incorporation of divergent views and goal sets. The major detail here is that each and every single one of the persons whose views are being blended would have to agree that these blend includes enough of their own contributions.
According to original definition of this conceptual blending, new concepts are formed by combining the most important details of already existing ideas. This process, however, is done carefully, in order to obtain a useful and high-value new concept. As such, the result is similar in a way to the concepts that gave birth to it, but at the same time possessing its own novel integrity. When considering the problem of aggregating volitions for use in AGI, this blending of different people’s goals and views is proposed as a novel, fine-tuned solution with which no human would disagree.