The Roots of Human Adaptive Behavior

The concepts people have in their minds drive their actions. These concepts are the mental representations of the real world that people use to make sense of their environment and to guide their behavior. They are stored in episodic, semantic, and procedural memories that are part of the long-term memory of individuals.

Concepts are defined by three elements: purpose, active function, and energy conservation function. These three elements are interrelated and interdependent. The purpose of the concept determines the active function, and the active function determines the energy conservation function.

They work as behavioral objects that establish and manage the comfort zone of individuals. This is a core discovery made at The Unicist Research Institute that opened the possibility of managing and influencing people.

Therefore, the knowledge of the concepts people have in their minds is basic to:

• Segment markets: because people’s buying decisions are driven by the concepts of their buying arguments.
• Strategy building: because the implementation of a strategy is only possible if the participating people share the concept of the strategy.
• Business organization: because the efficacy of people depends on the concepts of the business functions people have.

The conceptual approach requires that people need to know “why” something is happening. This is unnecessary at an operational level but is a basic question when dealing with strategic approaches. The “know why” is driven by a logical approach to reality that allows managing its concept making it reasonable, understandable, and provable.

When the boundaries of an activity are being expanded, individuals need to apprehend the concept behind its operational aspects to influence a new environment. This implies apprehending the ontology (nature) of its concept and its dynamics.

On the one hand, the conceptual approach to reality became possible based on the discovery of the structure of concepts, defined by a purpose, an active and entropic function, and an energy conservation function, which allowed apprehending the nature of facts and actions (unicist ontology).*

On the other hand, the discovery that the concepts people have in mind work as behavioral objects that drive their behavior made this conceptual approach necessary to deal with strategic approaches.

The Origin of Conceptual Thinking

The endless “Why?” question posed by children (nearly 3 years old) is what allows the establishment of the neural network needed by a person to apprehend and manage concepts. This process starts when children begin to look for the origin of what they are interested in.

This endless “why” questioning has three main benefits:

• It sustains the development of the neural network that allows dealing with the origin of things and not only with the operational aspects.
• It expands the language of the child driving her/him to deal with implicit integrative, fuzzy, and predicate logic, and opens the possibilities for an abductive approach to the real world.
• It provides the “why” that allows children to approach their games, which develops their systemic thinking approach.

Conceptual diagnoses, conceptual design, and conceptual management became possible using the unicist logical approach, which made “concepts” tangible and provided the structural-functional approach to develop diagnoses, strategies, and architecture.

The Discovery of Behavioral Objects

The discovery of behavioral objects explained how concepts drive human conscious actions, integrating the data available in long-term memory, involving semantic, episodic, and procedural memory. It explained that the deeper the level of conceptualization of individuals is, the higher the level of abstraction capacity that is needed and the better their capacity to emulate a reality is.

Concepts are the behavioral objects that drive human conscious actions; the level of depth of these objects defines the actions that are driven. The lack of concepts makes the information stored in the mind work as independent meaningless entities.

Behavioral objects are entities stored in the long-term memory that drive human actions. They transform data, stored in long-term memory, into meaningful information to generate adaptive actions. A behavioral object is a type of knowledge object that is fully action-oriented.

The research that led to this discovery showed that the concepts individuals have work as the behavioral objects that guide their actions.

It has to be considered that human actions are triggered by conceptual short-term memory (CSTM) that sustains intuition. Intuitive approaches are spontaneous impulses that are based on the analogies, preconceptions, or concepts individuals have in mind. In this sense, analogies foster illusions, preconceptions avoid personal risk-taking and concepts allow emulating in mind the nature of an external entity to drive conscious actions.

The research on the ontology of concepts described their structure as composed of a purpose, an active function, and an energy conservation function. This essential structure that is implicit in nature (ontogenetic intelligence of nature) including human beings and their creations, is the basis for conceptualization. When the unicist structure of a concept has been apprehended, conceptualization is possible, and the individual is able to emulate in mind the structure of a concept.

The use of the unicist ontology of concepts began in the early ’80s. This allowed the development of multiple applications with the participation of individuals who had different levels of conceptualization. The research was developed using the complexity science research methodology.

This document describes the conclusions of how concepts work as behavioral objects establishing the framework that provides the necessary security to empower personal inner and external freedom to develop value-generating actions.

Unicist Concepts

In nature, there are living beings, inanimated entities, and inanimated entities that work as adaptive systems, which emulate the functionality of “living beings”. The concepts of living beings define their intrinsic functionality. They define living creatures’’ essential functionality and their evolution laws. That is what we call their ontogenetic intelligence..

Living creatures possess intrinsic concepts. This means that these concepts exist in themselves and only need to be discovered. Inanimate entities also have intrinsic concepts that make them work.

The intrinsic concepts of living beings and inanimated entities have been named functionalist principles.

On the other hand, living creatures and inanimate beings have extrinsic concepts, which are deposited on them according to their functionality.

Functionalist principles are defined by concepts that define the natural behavior of living creatures and inanimated entities. .

An example of the Functionalist Principles of an electric motor might be useful.

An electric motor is a device that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. DC motors and AC motors are based on the same essential principles that define their triadic structure.

Their purpose (1) is the generation of mechanical energy. Their active function (2) is based on transforming electrical energy into magnetic energy. The energy conservation function (3) transforms the magnetic energy into mechanical energy.

Functionality/Credibility Zone

Intrinsic concepts are functionalist principles. They do not exist because someone believes them or not. They exist intrinsically.

On the other hand, extrinsic concepts describe the unicist ontology of the “use value” of an entity and depend, for their existence, on the fact that they are believed.

While intrinsic concepts are defined by their functionality zone, extrinsic concepts are defined by their credibility zone.

There is a structural difference between intrinsic and extrinsic concepts because they have different purposes. Intrinsic concepts define the intrinsic functionality of an entity, while extrinsic concepts deal with the integration of an entity in the environment.

Complementation and Supplementation Laws

The purpose, the energy conservation function, and the active function of a concept are integrated by logical rules which sustain their unity.

While the purpose and the active function are sustained by the supplementation law, the purpose and the energy conservation function are integrated by the complementation law.

Supplementation Law

The supplementation law is a relation between elements with redundant purposes and active functions, having different energy conservation functions..

One of the elements has a superior “energy conservation function that challenges the evolution of reality.

Complementation Law

The complementation law is an interdependent relation between two elements, actions or ideas.

Each one of these elements has what the other element requires and they both have a coincident homeostatic element.

Concepts as Strange Attractors of Information

The idea of a concept is stored in the semantic memory and allows integration of the information that permits transforming the idea of the concept into actions. This role is homologous to the function of the strange attractor of the chaos theory.

The idea of a concept makes lateral thinking possible and allows understanding homological patterns going beyond analogical patterns.

A concept has been apprehended if it has been stored in the long-term memory of an individual..

Long-term Memory is integrated by:

• Episodic memory is to recall personal experiences from our past.
• Semantic memory, stores facts, information, concepts, rules, principles, and problem-solving skills.
• Procedural memory is to remember how to perform or employ a strategy.

These three types of long-term memory are integrated. They store the concepts that people need to respond on time to influence an environment.

Concepts Storage

The objects stored in mind must fulfill several conditions:

1. They must include their conceptual structure to be meaningful.
2. They must be secure, to be reliable.
3. They must include the individual’s beliefs, to be remembered. When the individual’s beliefs are not included, they are forgotten.
4. They must include knowledge, which includes the possibility of application.
5. They must include groundings, which have to be reasonable, comprehensible, and provable.
6. They must include action procedures to make the objects useful.

A concept is stored in the three types of long-term memory:

1. Episodic memory pictures the object’s functional experiences, which permits an analogical approach.
2. Semantic memory stores the idea of the concept, its structure, and its mechanics.
3. Procedural memory contains the taxonomy to implement the actions that are included in the structure of the concept.

Concepts as Behavioral Objects

Concepts regulate and drive human actions. The concept an individual has defines the possibilities for achieving an objective. The absence of concepts generates meaningless actions or inactions. Concepts have different depth levels according to the conceptualization capacity of an individual. These levels are:

• The idea of the concept
• The operational concept
• The functional concept
• The essential concept

Each of these concepts works as a behavioral object, which is a special type of knowledge object that defines the possibilities of individuals’ actions. Understanding the functionality of these behavioral objects requires managing the rational description of their concepts and having a high level of consciousness.

Level 1) The Idea of the Concept

The functionality of the idea of the concept is a behavioral object that allows an individual to focus on a purpose and integrate the functional information that is necessary to build an intellectual image of what wants to be done. The idea of a concept gives meaning to the data included in the semantic memory and integrates it.

Level 2) The Operational Concept

This behavioral object includes not only the idea of the concept an individual has but also the behavioral patterns the individual has experienced, allowing the individual to categorize the actions in multiple ontological segments. It integrates the information included in the semantic and episodic memory.

Level 3) The Functional Concept

This behavioral object includes the operational concept an individual has but also the procedures an individual needs to follow to achieve specific results. It allows following the necessary actions focusing on the different patterns of the ontological segments. It integrates the data included in the semantic, episodic, and procedural memory.

Level 4) The Essential Concept

This behavioral object includes the functional concept an individual has and also the capacity of dealing with the future based on the knowledge of the nature of what is happening in the present.

The essential concept integrates the semantic, episodic, and procedural memory with an extreme abstraction capacity that allows integrating the previous stages with the knowledge of the nature of the environment. It integrates the data associated with the concept itself and the data associated with the concept of the environment in which it is included.

The use of mental concepts in social, economic, and business environments

Complementation is the core of the integration of social, economic, and business environments. The complementation of people is based on the exchange of mutual strengths and simultaneously sharing the same concept in an action field.

The use of concepts at a social level requires understanding the different segments that share the same concept in an environment, in order to provide what they need.

To approach concepts, it is necessary to use the unicist logic that describes the functionality of things that is defined by their intrinsic concepts.

The structure of the concepts is emulated by the unicist logic that allows apprehending the concepts people have in mind by developing ontological reverse engineering beginning with the actions of individuals, inferring the concepts they might have, and then confirming the concepts by developing the necessary destructive tests.

This is developed using abductive reasoning, which uses unicist logic to avoid intuitive guessing and allows accessing the concepts of things by including inductive and deductive processes to refine the conceptual approach and ensure the validity of the segmentation.

Conclusions

Concepts are the behavioral objects that drive human conscious actions; the level of depth of these objects defines the actions that are driven. The lack of concepts makes the information stored in the mind work as independent meaningless entities. In this case, specific data works as a signifier without functional meaning.

People need to have concepts to integrate the data they have in mind. Therefore the use of concepts is basic in any adaptive process or learning activity. Accumulating non-associated data in mind is a meaningless effort that can generate no conscious action.

Analogies and preconceptions are a fallacious substitution of concepts to avoid needing to assume the responsibility for generating value. The lack of concepts is perceived through the actions of an individual that produce no results and destroy her/his reliability in the environment.

The level of conceptualization an individual has can be upgraded by developing actions and measuring their results in fields where the individual has assumed the responsibility for generating value. It takes time. In real life, these upgrades, based on personal experiences, drive individuals toward wisdom.

The Unicist Research Institute