Natural Intelligence: A Strategy for Ordering

Prologue. NATURAL ORDER

Life is not the mechanics of dry resource-allocation algorithms. It does not roar like a machine; it unfolds as a complex existential score in which every bar holds a fragile balance between destruction and repair. In the previous book, the Natural Intelligence Theory of Functional (TFS) was presented as a universal framework for describing intelligent activity. In this volume, the argument advances a step further: Natural Intelligence is treated as a strategy for ordering life in all its forms — from the cell, to the planet, and further still, to cosmological scales.

In the architecture proposed here, TFS serves as an instrument that makes the structure of life both recognizable and reproducible — in biological tissue, social systems, and technological networks alike. The exposition unfolds in three interconnected dimensions: it is grounded in empirically robust findings from neuroscience, physiology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence research, and complexity science; these findings are interpreted through TFS as a universal scheme of afferent synthesis, acceptor of action result, and feedback afferentation; and on this basis, normative and programmatic proposals are developed for using this architecture in the design of safe “human–AI” hybrid systems, in planetary governance, and in resisting entropy.

Biology is usually narrated in the language of competition for energy — a kind of “ATP economy”. Yet the true miracle of ordering begins where internal dissonance is transformed into homeokinesis: a dynamic motion that sustains stability through continuous change. Life is not a state of rest, but an unending process of holding equilibrium within an environment that fluctuates at every scale. The ceaseless oscillations inside and outside the system become not mere noise but raw material for adaptation and learning.

Pyotr Anokhin’s TFS offers more than a neurophysiological diagram. It treats the functional system as a fundamental unit of activity organized around a future result: the anticipated useful effect acts as the system-forming factor that selects and reorganizes the ensemble of elements. Unlike linear reflex chains, functional systems are self-organizing cycles in which goal selection, afferent synthesis, and the acceptor of action result are closed into a loop of anticipatory regulation.

In this book, TFS is deliberately adopted as an organizational framework compatible with contemporary models of predictive coding and the free energy principle. Mathematical approaches describe the minimization of discrepancies between predicted and actual states, whereas TFS foregrounds the subject who acts for the sake of a result. Here, the useful effect not only reduces error; it sets a vector of ordering. Taken together, these two levels — formal-mathematical and embodied-phenomenological — make it possible to describe the behavior of both biological and artificial agents in a shared conceptual language.

Within this perspective, Natural Intelligence does not appear as a monolithic “supercomputer”, but as the polyphonic interplay of functional lines. In simplified form, several leading voices can be distinguished: the voice of viability and energetics; the voice of expansion and protection; the voice of empathy and cooperation; the voice of social norms and moral priorities; the voice of competition for status; and the voice of signals competing for attention.

These lines sound simultaneously in the organism of an individual creature, in human communities, and in populations of artificial agents. Any shift in the functioning of one of them changes the overall timbre, signalling a reconfiguration of the entire system. In what follows, ethics, conscience, culture, digital networks, algorithmic systems, and planetary monitoring platforms will be treated as different registers of a single symphony — functional systems operating at different scales yet organized according to shared principles.

Vitality emerges from this polyphony — from the capacity of functional systems to integrate conflicting signals while maintaining a common direction of movement within a homeokinetic flow. We shall trace how this symphony of ordering unfolds from the level of the cell and the individual psyche to social institutions, digital supersystems, and planetary Natural Intelligence, and ultimately to the solar horizon where Mind begins to conceive of itself as an element of cosmic self-regulation.

This book was written on the edge of science, philosophy and futurist essay, and does not claim scientific rigor. Its purpose is not to prove, but to provoke — to offer a language for thinking about intelligence, matter and the future that may prove useful even where it cannot yet be verified.

Part I. THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

The organism as an arena where needs and goals struggle for the right to be realized.

Chapter 1. INNER ECOLOGY

The organism is not a monolith with a single will, but an arena of tense cooperation and competition among numerous functional systems. One system draws in resources, another provides restoration, a third minimizes the impact of destructive factors. Even at the level of a unicellular organism, we see a dynamic choice between alternative actions, such as moving toward a source of light or toward a nutrient. In the terms of the Theory of Functional Systems, each such activity is a separate contender for dominance, with its own acceptor of the result and its own set of mechanisms for reorganizing processes toward a particular predicted state. It is a mistake to imagine life as a “solo performance.” Cells, organs, neural networks, and mental modules enter into internal alliances and conflicts, forming a dynamic inner ecology. Survival appears here as the outcome of the interplay between competitive and cooperative processes that create a complex field of mutual influence within a single biological system.

Needs define the primary contour of this ecology. Hunger, thirst, or the need for safety are not only subjective states, but distinct motivational systems with their own criteria of success. At higher levels of organization, these criteria are implemented through emotional systems that act as fast evaluators: they register the success or failure of a prediction without engaging slow analytical processing. Anxiety signals heightened risk; anger signals a blockage of access to the expected result; joy signals a match between what was anticipated and what was achieved. Each such episode is an attempt by a particular system to strengthen its influence within the inner “orchestra” of action selection.

Protomorality

In multicellular organisms with a developed nervous system — long before the emergence of human language — a special class of systems arises that can be described as protomoral dispositions. These are internal mechanisms for assessing social risks and the degree to which behavior conforms to expected interaction patterns. In afferent synthesis, such systems act as filters that reduce the “weight” of certain actions, even when those actions are advantageous in the short term. At this level, empathy manifests as a resonance of internal states: the suffering of another creature perturbs the observer’s own sensory and emotional systems. A functional system forms an acceptor of the result aimed at stopping this unwanted internal state; helping the other becomes a way of restoring one’s own regulatory equilibrium. In this sense, “altruism” appears as a by-product of stabilizing one’s own system rather than as a consciously declared principle.

Preverbal systems operate through rapid neural and neurochemical reactions. The rejection of injustice described in experiments with primates and other species turns out to be less an “ethical stance” than a reaction to a violation of the expected pattern linking effort and outcome. Within the organism there exists an acceptor of a certain “justice” of distribution; when reality departs from this model, negative feedback afferentation is triggered, experienced as an internal conflict and stimulating actions aimed at restoring stability. In this inner ecology, protomoral systems compete for influence on a par with basic instincts. They often serve as an inner censor that blocks impulses capable of provoking such a strong regulatory dissonance that the “price” of such a decision for the system as a whole becomes excessive.

Morality

In humans, protomoral mechanisms do not disappear; they are embedded in a broader context of language‑mediated norms and cultural scripts. What at the animal level appears as immediate sensory discomfort at the violation of expected interaction patterns takes the form of articulated rules, values, and narratives about “how one ought to act.” Language makes it possible not only to experience internal states, but also to encode them into stable symbolic structures that are transmitted across generations and become part of afferent synthesis as distinct regulatory systems.

Moral dispositions can be described as interiorized acceptors of socially approved outcomes. They impose additional constraints on the space of possible actions, even when the immediate emotional systems are silent or support a different choice. A person may refrain from an action not because they already feel shame or fear of punishment, but because they inwardly “see” a mismatch between a potential behavior and the model of a “right” action they have adopted for themselves. In TFS terms, this means that linguistically and culturally shaped norms form their own acceptors of the result, which compete for dominance alongside basic needs, emotional circuits, and protomoral dispositions, thereby expanding the inner ecology of regulation.

Where an individual feels inner resistance to their own intentions, this can be interpreted as feedback afferentation from deeper protomoral, emotional, and linguistically structured moral systems that signal the risk of structural destabilization along the chosen trajectory. In simple situations, the hierarchy of systems is relatively stable: an acute need dampens reflection, and the most “urgent” contour gains priority. At points of high tension — moral dilemmas, role conflicts — the inner ecology becomes explicit: needs, emotions, protomoral and moral dispositions enter into open confrontation, and whichever system temporarily forms the dominant acceptor of the result determines the subsequent trajectory of behavior.

Conflict of Horizons

One of the fundamental internal conflicts is the clash between systems with different temporal horizons. One functional system is oriented toward the immediate reduction of discomfort (satisfying hunger, avoiding pain), another toward maintaining long‑term structural integrity or delayed benefit. In TFS terms, this is a conflict between two acceptors of the result that describe incompatible future states. In animals, hunger activates a motivational contour that changes the sensitivity of sensory systems and suppresses alternative goals. The hunger system has an acceptor of the state of restored homeostasis; when other systems are active at the same time, a “bargaining” process unfolds between them for access to effectors — an internal politics of needs. In humans, a layer of representations about the acceptability of the action enters this scene: one system may propose using another’s resource, while others — associated with the image of a coherent “self” — resist. The brain compares several competing scenarios of the future and selects the one that forms the dominant regulatory regime.

Another archetypal conflict is the opposition between the danger‑avoidance system and the attachment system. In animals it appears, for example, in parental behavior: a bird that distracts a predator from the nest temporarily lowers the weight of signals of its own threat in favor of a system whose acceptor is linked to the survival of the offspring. This is a reorganization of the hierarchy in which priority is given to the contour that optimizes not only individual safety, but also the preservation of structure over time. In humans, this conflict becomes the subject of conscious choice. A rescuer entering a burning building feels fear, but that signal does not determine the outcome of afferent synthesis. Systems of empathy, social norms, and personal identity are activated; avoidance of risk, concern for the other, and maintenance of the image of “who I must be” enter into competition. The behavior that is actually realized depends on which of these contours succeeds in forming the dominant acceptor.

Mechanisms of Stability

If, in the current conflict, the short‑term system prevails and behavior contradicts relatively stable structures, a functional system is activated that we describe as guilt and shame. Its acceptor of the result is linked not to changing the past event, but to restoring the correspondence between actions and the current self‑image within a system of social expectations. These states alter the weighting of signals in subsequent acts of afferent synthesis: some actions are blocked as sources of a high internal “penalty”, others are strengthened as means of compensation. In animals, premoral analogues can be observed — reconciliation behavior, reactions to inequality, avoidance of partners who systematically violate expectations. In humans, these mechanisms become key tools for the long‑term stabilization of social relations. Prolonged shame can transform a way of life, but when excessively activated it turns into a pathological dominant that paralyses other systems; individual dispositions function as an inner “regulatory instance” that prevents random impulses from fully seizing control of the system.

Synthesis

The inner ecology of functional systems shows that no “voice” in the individual orchestra is mere noise. From the conflict between hunger and a long‑term goal to the clash of fear and attachment, these are different manifestations of a single process of anticipatory regulation based on competing predictions. Dissonance reveals the work of an inner “decision market” in which each system offers its own scenario and is evaluated by its capacity to sustain the adaptivity of the whole. An individual’s viability depends on how far the dominant systems are able to form acceptors of the result that are adequate to real challenges and constraints. When this process is well‑coordinated, we speak of inner harmony and resilience. When short‑term contours systematically seize control of the hierarchy, the system loses adaptivity and approaches regimes of breakdown.

The novelty of the approach in this chapter lies in the systematic application of the classical elements of TFS (afferent synthesis, acceptor of the result, dominance of functional systems) to the description of the competition among needs, emotions, protomoral and moral dispositions, guilt, and shame as a single inner ecology of regulation. A separate contribution is the interpretation of language and moral dispositions as semiotic superstructures built upon these biological circuits, which begin to function as additional regulatory systems within afferent synthesis, in line with contemporary theories of the interiorization of emotions and social norms.

More about this topic can be found in our book "Natural Intelligence: A Strategy for Ordering" on Our Books on Google Play.

Mykola Iabluchanskyi together with Andriy Yabluchanskiy

Prologue. NATURAL ORDER

Life is not the mechanics of dry resource-allocation algorithms. It does not roar like a machine; it unfolds as a complex existential score in which every bar holds a fragile balance between destruction and repair. In the previous book, the Natural Intelligence Theory of Functional (TFS) was presented as a universal framework for describing intelligent activity. In this volume, the argument advances a step further: Natural Intelligence is treated as a strategy for ordering life in all its forms — from the cell, to the planet, and further still, to cosmological scales.

In the architecture proposed here, TFS serves as an instrument that makes the structure of life both recognizable and reproducible — in biological tissue, social systems, and technological networks alike. The exposition unfolds in three interconnected dimensions: it is grounded in empirically robust findings from neuroscience, physiology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence research, and complexity science; these findings are interpreted through TFS as a universal scheme of afferent synthesis, acceptor of action result, and feedback afferentation; and on this basis, normative and programmatic proposals are developed for using this architecture in the design of safe “human–AI” hybrid systems, in planetary governance, and in resisting entropy.

Biology is usually narrated in the language of competition for energy — a kind of “ATP economy”. Yet the true miracle of ordering begins where internal dissonance is transformed into homeokinesis: a dynamic motion that sustains stability through continuous change. Life is not a state of rest, but an unending process of holding equilibrium within an environment that fluctuates at every scale. The ceaseless oscillations inside and outside the system become not mere noise but raw material for adaptation and learning.

Pyotr Anokhin’s TFS offers more than a neurophysiological diagram. It treats the functional system as a fundamental unit of activity organized around a future result: the anticipated useful effect acts as the system-forming factor that selects and reorganizes the ensemble of elements. Unlike linear reflex chains, functional systems are self-organizing cycles in which goal selection, afferent synthesis, and the acceptor of action result are closed into a loop of anticipatory regulation.

In this book, TFS is deliberately adopted as an organizational framework compatible with contemporary models of predictive coding and the free energy principle. Mathematical approaches describe the minimization of discrepancies between predicted and actual states, whereas TFS foregrounds the subject who acts for the sake of a result. Here, the useful effect not only reduces error; it sets a vector of ordering. Taken together, these two levels — formal-mathematical and embodied-phenomenological — make it possible to describe the behavior of both biological and artificial agents in a shared conceptual language.

Within this perspective, Natural Intelligence does not appear as a monolithic “supercomputer”, but as the polyphonic interplay of functional lines. In simplified form, several leading voices can be distinguished: the voice of viability and energetics; the voice of expansion and protection; the voice of empathy and cooperation; the voice of social norms and moral priorities; the voice of competition for status; and the voice of signals competing for attention.

These lines sound simultaneously in the organism of an individual creature, in human communities, and in populations of artificial agents. Any shift in the functioning of one of them changes the overall timbre, signalling a reconfiguration of the entire system. In what follows, ethics, conscience, culture, digital networks, algorithmic systems, and planetary monitoring platforms will be treated as different registers of a single symphony — functional systems operating at different scales yet organized according to shared principles.

Vitality emerges from this polyphony — from the capacity of functional systems to integrate conflicting signals while maintaining a common direction of movement within a homeokinetic flow. We shall trace how this symphony of ordering unfolds from the level of the cell and the individual psyche to social institutions, digital supersystems, and planetary Natural Intelligence, and ultimately to the solar horizon where Mind begins to conceive of itself as an element of cosmic self-regulation.

This book was written on the edge of science, philosophy and futurist essay, and does not claim scientific rigor. Its purpose is not to prove, but to provoke — to offer a language for thinking about intelligence, matter and the future that may prove useful even where it cannot yet be verified.

Part I. THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

The organism as an arena where needs and goals struggle for the right to be realized.

Chapter 1. INNER ECOLOGY

The organism is not a monolith with a single will, but an arena of tense cooperation and competition among numerous functional systems. One system draws in resources, another provides restoration, a third minimizes the impact of destructive factors. Even at the level of a unicellular organism, we see a dynamic choice between alternative actions, such as moving toward a source of light or toward a nutrient. In the terms of the Theory of Functional Systems, each such activity is a separate contender for dominance, with its own acceptor of the result and its own set of mechanisms for reorganizing processes toward a particular predicted state. It is a mistake to imagine life as a “solo performance.” Cells, organs, neural networks, and mental modules enter into internal alliances and conflicts, forming a dynamic inner ecology. Survival appears here as the outcome of the interplay between competitive and cooperative processes that create a complex field of mutual influence within a single biological system.

Needs define the primary contour of this ecology. Hunger, thirst, or the need for safety are not only subjective states, but distinct motivational systems with their own criteria of success. At higher levels of organization, these criteria are implemented through emotional systems that act as fast evaluators: they register the success or failure of a prediction without engaging slow analytical processing. Anxiety signals heightened risk; anger signals a blockage of access to the expected result; joy signals a match between what was anticipated and what was achieved. Each such episode is an attempt by a particular system to strengthen its influence within the inner “orchestra” of action selection.

Protomorality

In multicellular organisms with a developed nervous system — long before the emergence of human language — a special class of systems arises that can be described as protomoral dispositions. These are internal mechanisms for assessing social risks and the degree to which behavior conforms to expected interaction patterns. In afferent synthesis, such systems act as filters that reduce the “weight” of certain actions, even when those actions are advantageous in the short term. At this level, empathy manifests as a resonance of internal states: the suffering of another creature perturbs the observer’s own sensory and emotional systems. A functional system forms an acceptor of the result aimed at stopping this unwanted internal state; helping the other becomes a way of restoring one’s own regulatory equilibrium. In this sense, “altruism” appears as a by-product of stabilizing one’s own system rather than as a consciously declared principle.

Preverbal systems operate through rapid neural and neurochemical reactions. The rejection of injustice described in experiments with primates and other species turns out to be less an “ethical stance” than a reaction to a violation of the expected pattern linking effort and outcome. Within the organism there exists an acceptor of a certain “justice” of distribution; when reality departs from this model, negative feedback afferentation is triggered, experienced as an internal conflict and stimulating actions aimed at restoring stability. In this inner ecology, protomoral systems compete for influence on a par with basic instincts. They often serve as an inner censor that blocks impulses capable of provoking such a strong regulatory dissonance that the “price” of such a decision for the system as a whole becomes excessive.

Morality

In humans, protomoral mechanisms do not disappear; they are embedded in a broader context of language‑mediated norms and cultural scripts. What at the animal level appears as immediate sensory discomfort at the violation of expected interaction patterns takes the form of articulated rules, values, and narratives about “how one ought to act.” Language makes it possible not only to experience internal states, but also to encode them into stable symbolic structures that are transmitted across generations and become part of afferent synthesis as distinct regulatory systems.

Moral dispositions can be described as interiorized acceptors of socially approved outcomes. They impose additional constraints on the space of possible actions, even when the immediate emotional systems are silent or support a different choice. A person may refrain from an action not because they already feel shame or fear of punishment, but because they inwardly “see” a mismatch between a potential behavior and the model of a “right” action they have adopted for themselves. In TFS terms, this means that linguistically and culturally shaped norms form their own acceptors of the result, which compete for dominance alongside basic needs, emotional circuits, and protomoral dispositions, thereby expanding the inner ecology of regulation.

Where an individual feels inner resistance to their own intentions, this can be interpreted as feedback afferentation from deeper protomoral, emotional, and linguistically structured moral systems that signal the risk of structural destabilization along the chosen trajectory. In simple situations, the hierarchy of systems is relatively stable: an acute need dampens reflection, and the most “urgent” contour gains priority. At points of high tension — moral dilemmas, role conflicts — the inner ecology becomes explicit: needs, emotions, protomoral and moral dispositions enter into open confrontation, and whichever system temporarily forms the dominant acceptor of the result determines the subsequent trajectory of behavior.

Conflict of Horizons

One of the fundamental internal conflicts is the clash between systems with different temporal horizons. One functional system is oriented toward the immediate reduction of discomfort (satisfying hunger, avoiding pain), another toward maintaining long‑term structural integrity or delayed benefit. In TFS terms, this is a conflict between two acceptors of the result that describe incompatible future states. In animals, hunger activates a motivational contour that changes the sensitivity of sensory systems and suppresses alternative goals. The hunger system has an acceptor of the state of restored homeostasis; when other systems are active at the same time, a “bargaining” process unfolds between them for access to effectors — an internal politics of needs. In humans, a layer of representations about the acceptability of the action enters this scene: one system may propose using another’s resource, while others — associated with the image of a coherent “self” — resist. The brain compares several competing scenarios of the future and selects the one that forms the dominant regulatory regime.

Another archetypal conflict is the opposition between the danger‑avoidance system and the attachment system. In animals it appears, for example, in parental behavior: a bird that distracts a predator from the nest temporarily lowers the weight of signals of its own threat in favor of a system whose acceptor is linked to the survival of the offspring. This is a reorganization of the hierarchy in which priority is given to the contour that optimizes not only individual safety, but also the preservation of structure over time. In humans, this conflict becomes the subject of conscious choice. A rescuer entering a burning building feels fear, but that signal does not determine the outcome of afferent synthesis. Systems of empathy, social norms, and personal identity are activated; avoidance of risk, concern for the other, and maintenance of the image of “who I must be” enter into competition. The behavior that is actually realized depends on which of these contours succeeds in forming the dominant acceptor.

Mechanisms of Stability

If, in the current conflict, the short‑term system prevails and behavior contradicts relatively stable structures, a functional system is activated that we describe as guilt and shame. Its acceptor of the result is linked not to changing the past event, but to restoring the correspondence between actions and the current self‑image within a system of social expectations. These states alter the weighting of signals in subsequent acts of afferent synthesis: some actions are blocked as sources of a high internal “penalty”, others are strengthened as means of compensation. In animals, premoral analogues can be observed — reconciliation behavior, reactions to inequality, avoidance of partners who systematically violate expectations. In humans, these mechanisms become key tools for the long‑term stabilization of social relations. Prolonged shame can transform a way of life, but when excessively activated it turns into a pathological dominant that paralyses other systems; individual dispositions function as an inner “regulatory instance” that prevents random impulses from fully seizing control of the system.

Synthesis

The inner ecology of functional systems shows that no “voice” in the individual orchestra is mere noise. From the conflict between hunger and a long‑term goal to the clash of fear and attachment, these are different manifestations of a single process of anticipatory regulation based on competing predictions. Dissonance reveals the work of an inner “decision market” in which each system offers its own scenario and is evaluated by its capacity to sustain the adaptivity of the whole. An individual’s viability depends on how far the dominant systems are able to form acceptors of the result that are adequate to real challenges and constraints. When this process is well‑coordinated, we speak of inner harmony and resilience. When short‑term contours systematically seize control of the hierarchy, the system loses adaptivity and approaches regimes of breakdown.

The novelty of the approach in this chapter lies in the systematic application of the classical elements of TFS (afferent synthesis, acceptor of the result, dominance of functional systems) to the description of the competition among needs, emotions, protomoral and moral dispositions, guilt, and shame as a single inner ecology of regulation. A separate contribution is the interpretation of language and moral dispositions as semiotic superstructures built upon these biological circuits, which begin to function as additional regulatory systems within afferent synthesis, in line with contemporary theories of the interiorization of emotions and social norms.

More about this topic can be found in our book "Natural Intelligence: A Strategy for Ordering" on Our Books on Google Play.

Mykola Iabluchanskyi together with Andriy Yabluchanskiy