The 8 Axioms
The foundational premises of the AIM Framework—irreducible theoretical commitments that define the theory's structure, generate its predictions, and establish its falsification criteria.
Epistemic Note: These axioms are treated as non-negotiable theoretical commitments. Any claim, application, or extension within AIM must be consistent with these axioms. Any empirical finding that definitively contradicts one or more of these axioms would constitute serious evidence for revising or rejecting the framework.
Three-Source Taxonomy
Human motivation arises from exactly three neurologically distinct sources—Appetites (A), Intrinsic Motivation (I), and Mimetic Desire (M)—and no additional source is required for a parsimonious, falsifiable account of human motivation.
Explanation
Every action or choice draws on one or more of three distinct kinds of wanting: bodily needs and basic security (A), self-endorsed activities that remain rewarding even in private (I), and desires transmitted socially by observing what others want or value (M). The framework claims these three are sufficient—adding more categories would complicate the model without improving its explanatory power, while using fewer would blur together motivations that experiments and brain imaging clearly separate.
Canonical Citations
- For A (Appetites): Cannon, W. B. The Wisdom of the Body W. W. Norton & Co. (1932)
- For I (Intrinsic): Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior Plenum (1985)
- For M (Mimetic): Girard, R. Deceit, Desire, and the Novel: Self and Other in Literary Structure Johns Hopkins University Press (1961)
Common-Currency Integration
The three motivational sources converge in a common-currency valuation system centred in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and ventral striatum, which encodes a single scalar subjective-value signal for each option, enabling unified choice by converting unlike inputs into a comparable metric.
Explanation
Although A, I, and M are distinct systems, the brain must eventually produce a single "do this next" decision. The valuation hub integrates all three sources into one priority signal, like mixing three audio channels into a single speaker output. This integration can often be approximated as a weighted sum: the total value of an option equals its A-value times an A-weight, plus its I-value times an I-weight, plus its M-value times an M-weight.
Canonical Citations
- Levy, D. J., & Glimcher, P. W. "The root of all value: a neural common currency for choice." Current Opinion in Neurobiology, 22(6), 1027-1038 (2012)
- Chib, V. S., et al. "Evidence for a common representation of decision values for dissimilar goods in human ventromedial prefrontal cortex." Journal of Neuroscience, 29(39), 12315-12320 (2009)
- Bartra, O., et al. "The valuation system: A coordinate-based meta-analysis of BOLD fMRI experiments." NeuroImage, 76, 412-427 (2013)
Source Opacity
After common-currency integration, source-specific information is not preserved in the output signal. Downstream circuits, including those supporting conscious introspection, cannot reliably identify which source generated a given motivational input from the integrated signal alone.
Explanation
Once the brain has collapsed A, I, and M into a single "I want this" feeling, it has lost the tag indicating which channel contributed what. This is not a failure of self-awareness but an architectural fact: three-dimensional input (A, I, M) has been compressed into a one-dimensional output (scalar value), necessarily discarding source information. As a result, people often cannot accurately report why they chose something—the information simply isn't available to conscious reflection.
Canonical Citations
- Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. "Telling more than we know: Verbal reports on mental processes." Psychological Review, 84(3), 231–259 (1977)
- Johansson, P., et al. "Failure to detect mismatches between intention and outcome in a simple decision task." (Choice Blindness) Science, 310(5745), 116-119 (2005)
Confabulation
The brain routinely generates sincere but inaccurate narratives about the causes of choice, filling gaps in introspection with plausible reasons that do not match the actual motivational sources. Mimetic Desire is especially vulnerable to misattribution because its signals arrive preconsciously and are integrated before conscious awareness.
Explanation
When asked to explain their choices, people construct stories that sound reasonable but are often wrong. These are not lies—the person genuinely believes their explanation—but they are post-hoc rationalisations created after the decision has already been made. Because mimetic signals operate below the threshold of awareness and are integrated before conscious thought kicks in, M-driven choices are especially likely to be misattributed to intrinsic interest or rational calculation.
Canonical Citations
- Gazzaniga, M. S. "Cerebral specialization and interhemispheric communication." (The "Interpreter" module) Brain, 123(7), 1293-1326 (2000)
- Haidt, J. "The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment." Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–844 (2001)
- Wegner, D. M. The Illusion of Conscious Will MIT Press (2002)
M as Amplifier (The Mimetic Premium)
Mimetic Desire does not generate independent objects of desire. All objects are fundamentally A-objects (satisfying physiological deficits) or I-objects (enabling intrinsic processes). M operates as an amplifying force that inflates the perceived value of these objects by attaching a Mimetic Premium (P_M) to them.
Explanation
Mimetic desire doesn't create new things to want—it makes existing things seem more valuable because other people want them. The Mimetic Premium is the extra value someone assigns to an object purely because of its social meaning, visibility, or status. Critically, this premium can operate even when the individual experiences no direct status-pleasure—they may simply perceive a network consensus that "this is the value," even if that consensus is itself a cascade of copied valuations.
Canonical Citations
- Lebreton, M., et al. "Your Goal Is Mine: Unraveling Mimetic Desires in the Human Brain." Journal of Neuroscience, 32(21), 7146-7157 (2012)
- Zink, C. F., et al. "Know your place: neural processing of social hierarchy in humans." Neuron, 58(2), 273-283 (2008)
- Campbell-Meiklejohn, D. K., et al. "How the opinion of others affects our valuation of objects." Current Biology, 20(13), 1165-1170 (2010)
Differential Satiation Dynamics
The three sources exhibit structurally different satiation properties. A satiates episodically and cyclically (hunger ends with eating, returns with deficit). I deepens rather than terminates (competence generates new frontiers; only specific tools/means satiate). M has no natural satiation signal—status is comparative, and reference points shift continuously as models change and rivals advance.
Explanation
Appetites have a natural stopping point—once you've eaten enough or slept enough, the urge fades until the need returns. Intrinsic projects don't stop, but they evolve—as you get better at music or carpentry, new challenges and possibilities open up, though you may finish with a particular tool or piece. Mimetic desire, by contrast, has no endpoint—achieving a status goal simply resets the comparison to the next rung, because what matters is relative rank, not absolute achievement.
Canonical Citations
- For A (Cyclic): Berridge, K. C. "Motivation concepts in behavioral neuroscience." Physiology & Behavior, 81(2), 179-209 (2004)
- For I (Deepening): Csikszentmihalyi, M. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience Harper & Row (1990)
- For M (Non-satiating): Veblen, T. The Theory of the Leisure Class Macmillan (1899)
Preconscious Transmission
Mimetic desire is transmitted through mirror-neuron systems and social-reward circuits at latencies of 60–340 milliseconds—prior to conscious awareness, attentional gating, or deliberate reasoning. M-signals are therefore integrated into the common-currency system before the Individual can consciously scrutinise their source.
Explanation
By the time you become consciously aware of wanting something in a social context, the mimetic signal has already been processed and fed into your decision system. Mirror neurons and social-reward circuits operate faster than conscious thought, automatically copying the goals and preferences you observe in others. This means mimetic influence is experienced as a fait accompli of desire—it feels like your own authentic wanting, not like something borrowed from someone else.
Canonical Citations
- Libet, B., et al. "Time of conscious intention to act in relation to onset of cerebral activity (readiness-potential)." Brain, 106(3), 623-642 (1983)
- Rizzolatti, G., & Craighero, L. "The mirror-neuron system." Annual Review of Neuroscience, 27, 169-192 (2004)
- Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. "The chameleon effect: The perception-behavior link and social interaction." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76(6), 893–910 (1999)
Bayesian Belief Dynamics
Human belief revision follows Bayesian updating, where posteriors are computed from priors and evidence, posteriors become priors for subsequent updating cycles, and the updating process is content-agnostic—it operates identically regardless of the accuracy, quality, or crisis-potential of the beliefs being processed.
Explanation
The brain updates what it believes by combining what it already believes (priors) with new information (evidence) to produce revised beliefs (posteriors), and then treats those posteriors as the starting point for the next round of updates. This machinery tracks the form of belief change—how strongly a proposition is held, how new information shifts that strength—without directly evaluating whether the proposition is true, beneficial, or catastrophic. Because the updating mechanism is content-agnostic, any pattern in the inputs—such as systematic Confabulation operating on Source-opaque signals—will be compounded over time into stable belief structures.
Canonical Citations
- Helmholtz, H. von. Handbuch der physiologischen Optik (Unconscious inference) Leopold Voss (1867)
- Tenenbaum, J. B., et al. "How to grow a mind: Statistics, structure, and abstraction." Science, 331(6022), 1279–1285 (2011)
- Friston, K. "The free-energy principle: A unified brain theory?" Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 11(2), 127–138 (2010)
Summary Note on Axioms
These eight axioms form the non-negotiable core of the AIM Framework. They are treated as foundational premises that define the theory's structure, generate its predictions, and establish its falsification criteria. Any claim, application, or extension within AIM must be consistent with these axioms, and any empirical finding that definitively contradicts one or more of these axioms would constitute serious evidence for revising or rejecting the framework.
The remainder of the framework—specific constructs like Appetites, Intrinsic Motivation, Mimetic Desire, AIM weights, action episodes, etc.—instantiate these axioms in concrete, measurable terms.