Brain and behaviour involve mental operations which are at the same, middle level of computational abstraction, whose purpose is the management of motion, both of self (motor command and control) and of non-self (perceptual recognition and understanding). The term 'cybernetic', derived from the Greek word for 'helmsman', and thus implying control, is often associated with organisation and operations at this level.  The architectural paradigm known as the Marr-Poggio trilayer (MPT)is often invoked. It integrates both command (feedforward, 'top-down') and control (feedback, 'bottom-up') dynamic modes into a unified viewpoint. The diagram below demonstrates the ubiquity of this model by suggesting that it drives the use of common interrogative 'W' words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The MPT can be modified to allow for mutual self-recursion within the layers, thus forming an extended paradigm with increased relevance called Marr's Meta-Machine (MMM).
Arguably, Marr's trilayer (and therefore its recursive extension, the MMM) is a universal template that describes all goal-directed machinery, be they centralised systems (eg devices or organisms) or distributed organisations (like armies or large corporations).

 

The top, 'computational' layer can also be labelled as 'teleological' because that is the sense in which David Marr used the word 'computational' - to denote the end goal, or purpose, of the machination. Unfortunately, there exists a long-standing philosophical misunderstanding of the term  'teleology', partly due to the 18th Century German philosopher Kant, which has greatly limited its pragmatic acceptance by systems scientists. Perhaps 'tropic' would be a better word (meaning a 'response', 'orientation', 'attraction', as in geotropic, heliotropic ), because it has less historical 'baggage'.