AIM Framework glossary
Disciplinary Boundaries
Canonical definition
**Disciplinary Boundaries are the institutional and epistemic demarcations between academic fields that prevent cross-disciplinary synthesis of the kind required to identify Mimetic Desire, because the question "which of my desires are authentically mine and which were transmitted from others?" falls between every established discipline, too philosophical for neuroscience, too empirical for philosophy, too psychological for economics, too economic for psychology. Layer 5 of the Camouflage Architecture.
Explanation
Even if individual researchers penetrated the Triple Camouflage (Layers 1–3) through exceptional insight, Disciplinary Boundaries would prevent the synthesis. The AIM taxonomy requires simultaneous command of neuroscience (for the integration mechanism), philosophy (for the source-distinction question), economics (for the utility framework), and social psychology (for the mimetic transmission evidence). Academic career structures select for disciplinary depth, not cross-field breadth, meaning the conjunction of competencies required for the synthesis is actively selected against by institutional incentive structures. Disciplinary Boundaries are distinct from Disciplinary Priors (Layer 4): priors block recognition within a field; boundaries block synthesis across fields. See Camouflage Architecture, Disciplinary Priors, Academic Camouflage.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct.