Mimetic Desire (M)

Canonical definition

The continuous conditional Salience/value assessment channel of the AIM architecture, operating over the perceived Object field and conditioned on I-maintained priors. In the general case M is the reading of which Objects in the field are marked as valued and where each sits, and it requires no Model to be present; in the special case its input is the observed pursuits and valuations of other Individuals and the comparative-position data derived from them, and it is in the special case that M's escalating pathologies (rivalry, contagion, Coupling, the inflation of the Mimetic Premium, the scapegoat) arise. M operates continuously whenever the Individual is conscious and perceiving. Its inputs are the perceived Object field parsed through I's categorical priors, I's priors about current A-state, I's priors about current I-state, I's priors about M (Models, Reference Sets, comparative-position templates), and M's distinctive social-world input stream. Its outputs are Salience/value signals over Objects, weighted by the joint contribution of I's priors and M's social-world input. M does not store priors (all priors are maintained by I), does not pursue Objects, does not produce desire-as-wanting-to-pursue, does not ground Salience in A-deficits or I-opportunities, and does not initiate acquisition, these are downstream functions of integration, I's resolution, and the Decision Hub's action-selection. M is architecturally indispensable, it is the only channel through which social-world information enters the Salience computation, and without M, A-deficits could not be directed toward Objects that Models have identified as A-repair candidates and I-opportunities could not be flagged via the observed engagements of Models. M has no termination condition because conditional assessment over a perceived field cannot complete while perception, A-state, I-state, and the social world continue to exist. M's non-satiation (Axiom 6) is architecturally guaranteed by this specification. This entry specifies Mimetic Desire (M) at the Disaggregation Primitive level per the Dashboard Gauge Principle. [Axiom 1: Three-Source Taxonomy] Rendered at the level of the Decision Hub's inputs, M is the Salience signal: the Observer's output enters common-currency integration as one signed Salience contribution alongside the Body Manager's deficit signal (A) and the Thinker's deficit signal (I). Because that Salience contribution is integrated in a Scalar whose function is the selection of corrective action, it is necessarily experienced as the correction its sign demands rather than as Salience, as deficit where it is positive and as threat where it is negative (the Salience-Deficit Conflation Principle) which is why M-driven wanting presents phenomenologically as felt lack indistinguishable from a genuine need. Subordinate emission corollary. The characterisation above (salience-detection over the perceived Object field, fed to the Decision Hub via the Observer) is M's primary and load-bearing function, and it operates whether or not any other Individual is present: an Individual alone identifies a food Object as Salient through the same M-channel, so M is not agent-dependent. Other Individuals are, however, the highest-Salience Objects in the field as a structural consequence of update density, because they move, reconfigure, and change what they pursue, they generate far more Observer updates per unit time than static Objects, which is the same fact as M's agent-tuning (Axiom 9) seen from the Salience side. Built upon this detection foundation, and downstream of it, is a subordinate adaptive redeployment of the same channel: because the Thinker holds the prior that the Individual needs other Individuals to meet its A and I needs, the Individual acts to make itself a Salient Object in others' fields, so that valuation and provisioning by those others may follow. This emission drive is the Salience-Emission Asymmetry: the Individual controls only the emission, never the valuation, which is exogenous; the operative want is the binary "be Salient so I can get what I need," Salient being a state the Individual can occupy while valued is a gradient the Individual cannot set. The emission drive is not introspected as such (Source Opacity); its recurring, event-shaped, exogenously-terminated character is what the Salience Ratchet Principle governs; and it engages only when the Individual acts to draw another's attention, whereas the primary detection function runs continuously and agentlessly.