C-90. Behavioral architecture

If we were to introduce into higher education the HAS disciplines, unifying humanism, art and science as needed capabilities, needing of further development … say as first a course in Behavioral Architecture, then as a department, then as a college and finally as the core mission of the university … then we should ask ourselves why we haven’t made behavioral architecture the educational core all the way back to pre-school.

This is not just a matter for formal education. This is to provide a better realization of being and becoming human (App. XIX), a sense of the Nature of Things and the World of Possibility that should strengthen our Presence and enrich our Present through enhanced consequentiality via compositional change (II) capability. Not to mention our future (App. XI, App. XII, App. XV, App. XVI).

The term “architecture” has already been adopted for the biology of behavioral entities, focusing on brain activity. But architecture pertains to more than found entity structures (Stages 3-4 of realization). It speaks of building per se, of needed composition and needed compositional capability (Stages 1-2). Behaviors dictated or refracted by features of architectural productions sometimes draw on this term too. Nor would Frank Lloyd Wright’s functional architecture qualify, being about structures responsive to Stage 4 behaviors. These usages of the term are too restrictive.

We need behavioral architecture to affirm the independence of step and body structures (III), to respect the molecularity of both. And having been considered independent, their interdependence becomes a matter of further possible development – not just of this or that particular found relationship (C-93). We need behavioral architecture to fully realize that structures, of step and/or body, can be composed and many still need to be composed (e.g., new technologies [App. VII]) if we are to cope successfully with our problems – many in number and several in type (0: Sp, S-P, Ps, P; I: Pbeh, Psit).

Too easily we lapse into simplistic “means-end” and “cause-effect” conceptions of step structure. We seem unaware that a solution’s step structure comprises two or more distinctive molecules. There is not just a single, globby structure of the behavioral solution (I: Sbeh) of the “means” and “cause” ilk. There are also, and prior as well as party to it, structures which constitute composed solutions to the behavioral problem (I: Pbeh; C-41) – i.e., the compositional structuring which enables the behavioral solution.That is, if the step taken was not a reactive step of the “stimulus-response” persuasion, where recognition suffices as the step’s minding to dictate the step’s moving.

We understand from such examples as the first landing of a human on the moon that configured steps (App. XIX), as engineering feats of behavioral architecture, demonstrate that compositional change figures in consequentiality along with circumstantial change (II). Designed procedures are commonplace as affirmations of behavioral architecture.

What has not been well understood is the behavioral architecture to be found – but also much in need of further development – in minding steps and in messaging steps.Needed because our capabilities here, re the behavioral problem, are instrumental in bettering our situational problem solving.

Architecturally, molecular minding steps produce observations as outcomes, with cognition and communication the building blocks:

(Ogcog,cmu: Od =>Mgcog,cmu) =>Oncog,cmu

The produced observation, when typically manifested via linguistic moves, would then – in humans – go to verbal (mid-term) memory (App. XIX). (Literally talking to one’s self. See messaging steps below.) Ideational Mechanics (X; App. III) suggest a line of development for improving the compositional contributions of minding steps. Cognition comes alive, realized with far more implicatory strength than mere association or recognition. Sensery capability adds to sensory capacity, as cognition, with the aid of communication (App. III), adds to the sensory capacities of exposure and focal attention.
Messaging steps carry on the contributions of behavioral architecture, this time by making minding step’s observational productivity available to one’s self later (mid-term memory) and/or to some other behavioral entity. Thus, for example:

Person 1: OgOn => Mgcmu
Person 2: (Og:On => Mg) =>Ot

Where, depending on the points made by Person 1 and whatever minding step(s) are made by Person 2 with Person 1′s On as the observed, “communication” (qua “transfer of information”) is more or less achieved. Architectural improvement, in process and product, is very much in need of further development. (See, for instance, the types of points and types of Reads and Tells to be made: App. XX: Message theory.)

If Behavioral Architecture did no more – for now – than to call attention to human dysfunction and needed functioning it would be a good start, a beginning to our getting turned around (C-58). But we need to go forward. With respect to minding and messaging steps, as well as to configured steps, this is where we need to abandon the impedimentary characterizing capacity of concepts in order to employ the theoretical construct terms of App. XIX, the needed Presence functionality with which to produce the Present needed for problem solving.Architecturally speaking, Stage 4 behaviors seen in the vagueness of conceptual terms yields a shaky theory of behavior. (The story of the “3 Little Pigs” comes to mind: It makes a difference what you build with.)

(The lack of explicated behavioral structuring and structures seems to be the genesis – and partial truth – of the dyadic view/position on the “mind-body problem.” Of course, if you credit compositional change as no more than circumstantial change then a monadic view suffices. [This in complete denial of history’s contingent emergent materiality! {App. XI}. And of CEM history’s line of development in which cognition, communication and composition have already played such a consequential part – and, with community, offer a promising future way forward {App. XI, App. XII, App. XVI} at/in the frontier of history.] Minding steps especially! [See 0:S-P; App. XII: The “escarpment.”] And,as a modest added contribution, Behavioral Architecture dramatizes the inadequacy of Behaviorism — so mindfully oblivious to minding steps — as a procedural tool for behavioral analysis, let alone for behavioral composition.See C-92.)

There is much that Behavioral Architecture has yet to cover.However, it might even now offer to educational policy (App. XVII), from the pre-school challenge of how to build friendships and partnerships(to play and work together) to higher education’s removal of its intellectual impediments (ideational processes and products [concepts especially], about and toward a human history of behaviors not yet enlightened by full realization of, and in accord with, the Nature of Things).

(c) 2013 R.F. Carter
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