Experiential operational descriptors

Implication of Indwelling Intelligence in Global Confidence-building (Part #3)

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The significance of what have here been termed "operational descriptors" calls for some further comment, although the understanding associated with these terms is better suggested by citations from the literature. The terms identified include: innate, inspired, driven, imbued, implicit, tacit, imagined, sense, presence, possession, embodied, indwelling:,

• Innate: Implying born with ("inborn"), or natural to ("connatural") -- possibly calling for little comment in this context. As with "instinctive", it suggests a form of knowledge or intelligence which is readily accessible as a skill. Whilst it may have the quality of genius, in its outcome it is held to be inherently comprehensible (as in the case of Mozart and other prodigies). As applied to "spirituality" or "wisdom", it may however evoke other questions and possibilities (as in the case of the Dalai Lama, or Krishnamurti).
• Inspired: Whilst the consequence of such inspiration may be remarkable at the time, the term suggests little about the source of the inspiration and any persistence of its influence over time.
• Driven: Of relevance here with respect to any degree of identification with the driving force and the underlying origins of that drive.
• Imbued: This is relevant to the extent that nature, for example, may be experienced as imbued with intelligence. It is the attribution of a quality, especially where this might otherwise be unexpected.
• Implicit: Here what is explicitly perceived may be held to have other attributes which are necessarily less obvious and may only be inferred. Its significance has been most notably highlighted by David Bohm (Wholeness and the Implicate Order, 1980).
• Tacit: This is indicative of the kind of knowledge ("tacit knowledge") it is difficult to transfer to another by conventional means (Michael Polanyi, The Tacit Dimension, 1966; Stephen Gourlay, Tacit knowledge, tacit knowing or behaving?)
• Imagined: This may imply pure fantasy of little import, or the consequence of active imagination -- an act of creativity informing subsequent design.
• Sense: Of relevance here when not specifically related to the conventional senses, implying some other (more integrative or fundamental) mode of knowing through which something is "sensed".
• Presence: Of particular relevance here where there is an otherwise  undetectable sense of "presence", or the implication of such a presence even though undetected -- possibly held to be all-encompassing or a source of inspiration.
• Possession: Of concern here to the extent that there is a sense of being "possessed" by an otherwise undetectable presence -- possibly as a source of inspiration or as a force impelling to a particular course of action.
• Embodied: Of particular relevance here with respect to explorations of embodied cognition

Indwelling: This term is the focus for this exploration through implying, to a greater degree than those above, an inner activating or guiding force. As becomes evident from the citations below, its significance has been effectively appropriated by religion, most notably Christianity -- despite the communication challenges highlighted in the discussion below of the "semiotic barrier" and the "branding barrier", and the questionable assumptions to which these give rise. Despite such reservations, the volume of insightful studies relating to indwelling in this context merits careful attention as offering clues of greater generality. Of particular interest however is a review of word usage relating to Dwell /Dwelling (The Pioneer's New Testament, #82) -- given that "indwelling" can only be inferred from Biblical texts.

With respect to "indwelling", the paradoxical relationship between "inside" and "outside", especially in the light of any higher order of dimensionality, has been very fruitfully clarified in terms of the geometry of the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle by Steven M. Rosen (Topologies of the Flesh: a multidimensional exploration of the lifeworld, 2006; Dimensions of Apeiron: a topological phenomenology of space, time, and individuation, 2004).

Cognitive prostheses: There is an appropriate irony to the more readily recognizable use of "indwelling" or "implant" with respect to prosthetic devices (urinary catheters, microchips, pacemakers, neural prostheses, and the like), as noted above. Use of "indwelling" in the table above may well imply a form of "cognitive prosthesis" of which various forms are already recognized (Kenneth M. Ford, Cognitive Prostheses ; J. L. Arnott, N. Alm and A. Waller, Cognitive prostheses: communication, rehabilitation and beyond. Proc. IEEE Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 1999).

Implant: Both education and propaganda may be understood in terms of "implanting" an idea -- of which "sustainability" is a contemporary example. Understood as "inception", the process has been highlighted by the movie Inception (2010) and explored as a theme of popular culture (Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, Inception and Philosophy: ideas to die for, 2011; David Kyle  Johnson, and William Irwin, Inception and Philosophy: because it's never just a dream, 2011). This is the characteristic function of any "guiding image" as cultivated in religious practice and some forms of meditation. Rather than being deprecated as the "opium of the people", some forms of religion could be more appropriately recognized as "cognitive prosthetics".

Meta-pattern: More interesting is the sense in which the table is indicative of the progressive emergence, or recognition, of the "meta-pattern" identified by Gregory Bateson (Mind and Nature: a necessary unity, 1979), as previously discussed (Hyperspace Clues to the Psychology of the Pattern that Connects, 2003; Walking Elven Pathways: enactivating the pattern that connects, 2006).

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