conceptual frameworks

All of us have in our minds a kind of working model of the world. These conceptual frameworks are built up from childhood, shaped by experience, and modified and refined by learning and reflection over time. Although we normally take them for granted, they continually influence our understanding of the environment and the efficacy of our actions. 

Conceptual frameworks are powerful because they are highly integrated. Concepts, principles, beliefs, expectations, memories, experiences, language and other facets of cognition hang together in intricate networks, related by varying distances and weights. The meaning of one concept is shaped by multiple other concepts it is connected to. The quality of a belief is dependent on the web of other beliefs within which it resides.

The value of conceptual frameworks depends on the extent to which they equip us with Explanatory Power - the ability to formulate problems and manage the causalities that determine their solution. As any sphere of activity becomes more complex, the need for conceptual refinement becomes increasingly pressing. Inevitably, our ability to adequately understand problematic features of the world requires frameworks that are conceptually richer than what has worked previously.

In many settings of commerce, the fundamental problems of business have accreted more and more of this complex character. Addressing them requires an analytical method tuned to the play of variables that produce the environment's complex effects and a language of analysis rich enough to explain, project and measure their interactions. Achieving those objectives depends on showing in a conceptually rigorous way what the structures of complex commerce are whenever a true belief about those structures is held, or a true statement about them is made, or a projected state of affairs is instantiated. This requires an understanding of the ontology of commerce, of which Pragmatica is an example.