Interoception sharing as all the cognitive glues

Stress sharing is a cognitive glue. This means that the members of a collective intelligence are able to coordinate with each other and turn the plans of other members from obstacles into affordances, scaling up their goals and competencies as a result, by sharing stress with each other. For example, cells can coordinate paths with each other because when one cell is unable to get where it wants to go, it can share stress with other cells. The cells that were previously happy in their positions now want to move around to alleviate the stress they’re experiencing, which opens up the path for the original cell. This allows for cells to consistently produce complex forms of organization, such as is seen in the process of morphogenesis, simply by having each cell pursue its own goals rather than following a genetic plan. It sounds like having every cell just pursue its own goals would lead to chaos, but thanks to stress-sharing, the result is order instead.

I think that the idea of stress sharing naturally generalizes to interoception sharing. Interoception sharing is the same story as above, but with interoception substituted for stress. All stress signals are interoceptive signals, but not all interoceptive signals are stress signals.

A signal is interoceptive if it is relevant to allostasis. Allostasis refers to the process of an intelligence updating its plans to achieve its goals by adjusting the pattern of its internal equilibrium. Intelligences are collective intelligences, so “adjusting the pattern of its internal equilibrium” means changing the plans of the agential members of the collective. These agential members themselves rely on their own interoceptive signals to update their plans. Basically, an interoceptive signal means “you need to update your plans” (even a positive interoceptive signal means that you need to be more confident in your existing plans, or something to that effect, so it’s still telling you to update).

Just as in the case of stress sharing, when one agential member of the collective updates its plans, it is likely to come into conflict with the plans of other agential members. Interoception sharing refers to any profess by which an agential member that is updating its plans due to interoceptive signals shares those interoceptive signals with other agential members, causing them to update their plans as well. Because the interoceptive signals of one agential members are the affordances of the other agential members, the latter are able to adjust their plans to be mutually compatible with the plans of the former.

The price system is an example of interoception sharing—possibly the example of interoception sharing if all other systems of interoception sharing are in some way exactly analogous to the price system. It works like this. First, a human being—an economic agent—experiences an interoceptive signal within themselves, so they change their plans. Their plans require using resources, which they buy in the market, so when they update their plans, they update their demands for goods and services, shifting demands from some resources to other resources. The changes in demands cause changes in relative prices. The resulting price signals are experienced as interoceptive signals by all the other members of the economy because the new prices make them update their plans. These updates, using less of what is more expensive and more of what is less expensive, make it easier for the original person to acquire the resources that their new plan requires.

Interoceptive signals are constructed and transmitted along a body, suggesting that the economy has a body, albeit an unusual one. The economy’s body is the people who make use of prices to form their plans, and whose updated plans cause prices to update. In general, it seems plausible that any collective intelligence will function by having members of the collective share interoceptive signals with each other in such a way as to construct a group plan. The interoceptive signals might be stress, price, or anything else—so interoception sharing is a general descriptor for all of the cognitive glues.