AIM Framework glossary
Agent-Based Causal Default (Axiom 9)
Canonical definition
Human causal cognition is architecturally optimised for detecting and modelling agents, predators, prey, rivals, collaborators, and defaults to agent-based explanations when causal demands arise, because the brain's threat-detection systems, social-reasoning circuits, and theory-of-mind architecture converge on agentive causation as the computationally tractable mode of explanation. Systemic, emergent, or distributed causes exceed the computational capacity of these systems and are therefore structurally unavailable as explanatory completions, ensuring that Confabulation (Axiom 4) characteristically takes agent-based form. [AXIOM]
Explanation
When something goes wrong and you ask "why?", your brain automatically looks for a who, someone blocking, taking, or threatening, because that's the kind of answer your evolved threat-detection systems can compute. It cannot naturally produce answers like "this happened because of a diffuse institutional process operating across thousands of nodes over decades." The agent-based answer arrives fast, feels certain, and achieves the cognitive closure your brain demands, even when no agent is actually responsible. Under the canonical formalism of Chapter 11 (The Four-Way Agent-Type Vector), the agent-type classifier described by this axiom outputs a position in the four-dimensional Agent-Type Vector (C, R, X, Y) rather than a discrete category label; see the Agent-Type Vector entry immediately following.
Epistemic status
Axiom; Framework-Specific Foundational Claim.
Derivation
Chapter 4, Section 4.3.9; Chapter 4, Section 4.3.10; Chapter 10, Section 10.10.2.