Indwelling intelligence of the human body

Implication of Indwelling Intelligence in Global Confidence-building (Part #6)

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This cluster is particularly valuable to the more general argument through the manner in which it gives "scientific" credibility to a form of "indwelling". The dimensions of this cluster can be usefully distinguished in terms of:

• inner ecosystem: as increasingly recognized from a systems perspective, namely the role of trillions of bacteria in the metabolism and viability of the human body -- outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1 (Jennifer Ackerman, How Bacteria in Our Bodies Protect Our Health, Scientific American, June 2012). Otherwise titled "The Ultimate Social Network", the article asks with respect to "Your Inner Ecosystem", who's in control?
  
  As indicated by the question, with what "indwelling intelligence" is the global control of that system ensured? What sense does the individual have of the nature of that intelligence? To what degree, and how, can the individual participate in the governance of that system -- "consciously"? What qualities of understanding are evident in that indwelling intelligence which offer clues to the governance of psychosocial systems?
  
  
• autonomic nervous system: whilst the bacteria can be understood as having an independent symbiotic existence vital to the human body, the involuntary nervous system is that part of the peripheral nervous system that controls functions a variety of bodily processes -- mainly below the level of consciousness. These include: heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, salivation, perspiration, pupillary dilation, micturition (urination), and sexual arousal. Some of these are, to varying degrees, responsive to the conscious mind -- notably as a consequence of the practice of certain disciplines (hatha yoga, etc). With what intelligence is the set of metabolic pathways controlled?
  
  Again however there is the question of the nature of the indwelling intelligence that ensures the balanced dynamic of these processes -- with or without conscious control. Again the question evokes recognition of its systemic analogue with respect to any ecosystem, but especially that at the global level. Clearly, despite the "meditations" of science and the support of technology, humanity is far from being able to control nature effectively, despite unproven claims to the contrary. The question is of course of some pertinence in relation to river systems, climate change, bioengineering, and geo-engineering proposals.
  
  
• anticipatory systems: intelligence in humans is notably characterized by its anticipatory capacity, defined by Robert Rosen (Anticipatory Systems, 1985) in terms of an anticipatory system: a system containing a predictive model of itself and/or its environment, which allows it to change state at an instant in accord with the model's predictions pertaining to a later instant (Robert Rosen, Structural and Functional Considerations in the Modelling of Biological Organization, 1970; Planning, Management, Policies and Strategies: four fuzzy concepts, 1972). This raises questions as to how that information is "encoded" at the limbic level. Living organisms have the capacity at the somatic level to decipher information encoded in DNA -- enabling them to develop from a fertilized cell, effectively anticipating the mature organism which is the outcome. The human immune system is able to recognize its own proteins in contrast to the pathogens against which it acts. No conscious human action is involved in that process of which there is little if any awareness. Anticipation, as the capacity to build and use predictive models based on encoded information, for the purposes of system guidance and control, is the foundational behaviour pattern of both life and mind.
  
  This biological focus raises the question as to whether there is any degree of "isomorphism" between the somatic form of anticipation and that of any conceptual form as a consequence of abstraction. The life-preserving behaviour of somatic anticipation -- attraction and aversion-- is readily inflated into phobias and addictions in the mind. Exhortations to detachment may, or may not, be of relevance. With respect to the general argument here it might be asked how the failure of anticipatory systems, as in the case of weapons of mass destruction, climate change, resource overshoot, and the like, is an indication of lack of collective intelligence.
  
  
• entelechy: The concept of entelechy dates back to Aristotle, but has been set aside in most recent preoccupations of science. It refers to the potentiality, namely the "possibility" that a thing can be said to have, most notably through its biological development -- which might then be understood as implying a form of indwelling intelligence. It has been reconsidered in the biological vitalism of Hans Driesch who argues that living things develop by entelechy, namely by a common purposive and organising field -- contrary to mechanistic assumptions. Subsequent to its influence on medieval theology, the concept has influenced modal logic, physics and philosophy.
  
  The notion of entelechy is especially useful in reflections on development and the emergence of the future, as separately discussed (Entelechy: actuality vs future potential -- presenting the future, 2001). As noted therein, there is a curious contemporary interest in entelechy, that has now been taken up by the human potential movement -- and notably by Jean Houston through an Entelechy Institute, now seemingly transformed into a Mystery School. Practices originally relating to this focus included: evocation of entelechy; opening to, affirming and talking to the underlying source/wellspring/ground of lived experience; a felt sense of good/fitting/appropriate timing in personal and social behaviour, both secular and sacred; a felt sense of good/fitting/appropriate spatial patterns; Subud latihan; Kitselman's E-therapy; Gendlin's experiential focussing. Some companies concerned with human resource development have also taken up the term (cf Entelics Research). The various interested parties have adapted understandings of its meaning to their particular ends. The idea of a form-giving agent in matter takes on a resemblance to some of the speculative modern notions of L-fields, morphogenetic fields, and scalar potential fields.
  
  The issue can be framed otherwise by analogy with that following from biology, namely how does any plant "know" it is committed to producing a flower? What then is the corresponding "knowing" within the thinking of an individual? What is the nature of the teleological driver, chaotic attractor, or deep structure through which an individual engenders psychological development or individuation? Is this to be experienced as a form of "indwelling intelligence"? What is one trying to bring forth and why? What is the "flower" one endeavours to create, without even knowing what a flower is? There may be a sense of "feeling it in one's bones" or intuitively, but the emerging "flower" is still more a tendency and an emergent intuition of "goodness of fit" than anything that has the degree of closure of a model. How does one engage within oneself with that kind of emerging order where isomorphs in the biological world may be the only key?
  
  
• embodied cognition: Understanding "through" the body and its dynamics is in process of being variously explored (Francisco J. Varela, The Embodied Mind: cognitive science and human experience, 1992; Kuang-Ming Wu, On Chinese Body Thinking: a cultural hermeneutic, 1996; George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy In The Flesh: the embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought, 1999; R. Pfeifer and J. Bongard, How the Body Shapes the Way We Think: a new view of intelligence, 2006; Mark Johnson, The Meaning of the Body: aesthetics of human understanding, 2007; Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, The Corporeal Turn: An Interdisciplinary Reader, 2009). As expressed by Mark Johnson:

  Unfortunately meaning is a big, messy, multidimensional concept that is applied to everything from grandiose notions like the meaning of life all the way down to the specific meanings of single words or even morphemes.

  As the focus of his earlier work, meaning grows from the visceral connections to life and the bodily conditions of life -- from the bodily sources of meaning, imagination and reasoning. However he now argues that:

  In retrospect, I now see that the structural aspects of our bodily interactions with our environment upon which I was focusing were themselves dependent on even more submerged dimensions of bodily understanding. It was an important step to probe below concepts, propositions, and sentences into the sensorimotor processes by which we understand our world, but what is now needed is a far deeper exploration into the qualities, feelings, emotions, and bodily processes that make meaning possible. Once I took the leap into these deep, visceral origins of meaning, I soon realized that I was dealing with aspects of experience traditionally regarded as the purview of aesthetics. If this was true, then aesthetics must not be narrowly construed as the study of art and so-called aesthetic experience. Instead, aesthetics becomes the study of everything that goes into the human capacity to make and experience meaning. (p. x)

  Johnson sees this approach as contrasting with much contemporary philosophy focusing exclusively on abstract conceptual and propositional structure, offering only a very superficial and eviscerated view of mind, thought, and language. For him the good news lies in the new sciences of the embodied mind:

  In the past few years the cognitive neuroscientists have begun to entice even hardcore philosophers of mind and language to pay more attention to the vast, submerged continents of nonconscious thought and feeling that lie at the heart of our ability to make sense of our lives. (pp. x-xi)

  Johnson's undertaking enriches the valuable literature on the embodied mind which he cites (as one of its key authorities), and which is variously discussed separately (Existential Embodiment of Externalities: radical cognitive engagement with environmental categories and disciplines, 2009; Embodiment of Identity in Conscious Creativity: challenge of encompassing "con", 2011; Self-reflective Embodiment of Transdisciplinary Integration (SETI): the universal criterion of species maturity? 2008).

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