AIM Framework glossary
Action
Canonical definition
Action is what the Scalar drives out through the effectors, and it becomes observable as behaviour: it is a subclass of behaviour and not the whole of it. Action is accordingly the output the Decision Hub selects, the transduction of the integrated Common-Currency Scalar into motor or speech output directed at an Object. An action requires a valuation at the Decision Hub, whether by fresh integration or by retrieval from the cached-value habit store; a threshold crossing on that valuation; and engagement of an effector. Where any of the three is absent there is no action, though there may still be behaviour. The Scalar alone does not settle the matter, because the same Scalar that drives an action out through the effectors also produces disengagement when it sits at or near zero, and disengagement is behaviour without action.
Explanation
Action is the narrow term. It names the moment the valuation leaves the body: the reach, the purchase, the sentence spoken, the click. Everything upstream of effector engagement is valuation, and valuation is not action however strongly it is felt. Wanting an Object intensely and not moving toward it is not a weak action; it is no action, and the architecture treats it as such. The Scalar that issued in no action is not thereby wasted. It returns to the Thinker as feedback and is written to the Belief Register exactly as it would have been, which is why an Individual can be shaped over a lifetime by valuations that never once issued in movement. The Object need not lie outside the Individual. The three requirements stated above are the whole of what an action requires, and reaching something external is not among them. Object carries its defined sense here, which is any target of motivated pursuit whether or not it lies outside the Individual, conditions of the Individual's own body included. Where the deficit is a condition of the body, the action corrects it directly and the correction is a single action: the Individual scratches the itch, shifts off the numbed limb, withdraws the hand from the heat. Nothing is acquired, and the deficit closes. A chain of actions running through intermediary Objects is what the architecture does where the correcting condition is not already to hand, and the length of that chain is a fact about the deficit's circumstances rather than a condition on action. Distinction from behaviour. Behaviour is the broader term. Every action is behaviour; most behaviour is not action. An Individual asleep is behaving and selecting nothing. An Individual who has declined an Object is behaving, and the declining may be the most diagnostically informative thing they do that day. The Behavioural Signatures are read over behaviour rather than over action for this reason, and the framework's diagnostic reach depends on the difference.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.
Derivation
Chapter 4, Section 4.4.1; Chapter 4, Section 4.4.2; Chapter 4, Section 4.4.0; Chapter 4, Section 4.4.9.