Three Axioms of Benefit–Harm Seeking: A Non-Metaphysical Behavioral Semantic Framework for Social Behaviour Theory

This preprint presents a substantially revised and article-length development of themes first introduced in the broader preprint Three Axioms of Benefit–Harm Seeking: A Non-Metaphysical Behavioral Semantic Framework for the Humanities and Social Sciences (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17703759). Whereas the earlier preprint proposed a general behavioral-semantic layer for the humanities and social sciences, the present manuscript narrows the scope to social behaviour theory and reformulates the framework in a more focused and discipline-specific form. The paper develops three core claims: that human behavior can be understood as oriented within a perceived benefit–harm structure; that this structure is irreducibly dual-dimensional, comprising material and psychological components; and that rationality is best treated as subjective rationality under conditions of limited information, emotional influence, identity commitments, and norm internalization. On this basis, the manuscript proposes a minimal comparative semantic framework for the analysis of social behaviour rather than a competing substantive theory of its own. Compared with the earlier broad preprint, this manuscript provides a tighter conceptual scope, a clearer disciplinary focus, sharper boundaries of application, and a more explicit formulation of empirically differentiable propositions, scope conditions, and criteria for revision. It should therefore be read not as a simple reposting of an earlier manuscript, but as a distinct and substantially reworked article-length contribution within the same broader research program. Within that broader program, related preprints address collective dynamics and historical processes (Benefit–Harm Structures of Groups and History: A Non-Metaphysical Behavioral Semantic Framework for Collective Dynamics, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17722363), philosophy as metatheory and methodological deconstruction (Philosophy as Metatheory: A Methodological Framework for the Systematic Deconstruction of the Humanities Based on the Three Behavioral Axioms, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17748797), and a case-study application to orthodox Marxism (Orthodox Marxism as a Test Case: A Behavioral-Semantic Reconstruction Based on the Three Axioms of Benefit–Harm Seeking, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17774078).