AIM Framework glossary
Individual
Canonical definition
An Individual is any entity whose behaviour is generated by an integrated motivational architecture in which Appetites (A), Intrinsic Motivation (I), and Mimetic Desire (M) are weighted and combined through a Decision Hub to produce choice, subject to Source Opacity (Axiom 3), Confabulation (Axiom 4), Differential Satiation (Axiom 6), and Preconscious Transmission (Axiom 7) at species-appropriate parameter values (including transmission-window latency, reference-set composition, and the range of I-compatible activities). The Individual is the unit at which AIM motivational phenomenology is specified.
Explanation
An Individual, in AIM, is any being whose wanting is produced by the three-source architecture running through a Decision Hub. The definition is architecture-first: what qualifies an entity as an Individual is the presence of the integrated A-I-M architecture, not species membership. Whether a given being is an Individual is therefore an empirical question about its neural integration, not a matter to be settled by stipulation. Scope note for this book. For the purposes of this treatise, all discussion of Individuals refers to human Individuals (natural persons), and the book's institutional analysis, crisis dynamics, and Knowledge Patch operations are specified at human parameter values unless explicitly stated otherwise. In principle, however, the architectural definition above extends to any being in which the A-I-M architecture is instantiated, and if another species were found to possess that architecture, AIM's results would apply to it at its own parameter values. The book does not pursue that extension but neither does it foreclose it.
Epistemic status
Framework-Specific Construct. The species-generality of the definiens follows from the Derivation-Not-Ambition Principle (DNA-P): the scope of AIM's consequences is fixed by what its premises logically imply, not by authorial stipulation.
Derivation
Related terms
- Proxy
- Decision Hub
- Source Opacity
- Confabulation
- Preconscious Transmission
- Differential Satiation Dynamics (Axiom 6)
- AIM Framework
- DNA-P