Interoceptive Governance: Passive Indicator Systems and Acknowledgment Thresholds Across Biological, Cognitive, Organisational, and Physical Substrates

This paper proposes a cross-substrate framework for understanding passive indicator systems and the conditions under which they resolve. The central claim is that a structural analogy exists between the body’s somatic signalling architecture and the indicator systems present in cognitive, organisational, and physical systems: in each case, a system under unresolved load broadcasts a state signal, and that signal persists until a precise acknowledgment threshold is crossed.

Examines four substrates: biological (somatic sensation, polyvagal regulation, orienting response and gyroscopic stabilisation), cognitive (model recognition events, interpretive reorganisation), organisational (interpretive debt, vernacular governance), and physical (passive indicator design in engineered systems). Draws on polyvagal theory, Gendlin’s felt sense, Levine’s somatic experiencing, EMDR architecture, and Friston’s free energy principle. Convergent independent evidence from Oxford University’s 2026 research on neuronal survival and developmental timing is examined as an empirical instance of the same structural logic at molecular scale.