Information for Contributors

Essential Guidelines

Types of Contributors

There are many types of people who may be Contributors to EmergeWiki, as well as many types of knowledge that they may contribute.

We welcome any and all Contributors who will follow our guidelines and who can help people better understand the wide range of ancient and contemporary traditions and approaches there are to Emergent Phenomena as well as how the contemporary global clinical mainstream may add value in relation to these.

In this way, Contributors may be: clinicians and other healthcare providers, scientists, therapists, traditional and contemporary teachers and practitioners, and scholars from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines, as well as non-academic/non-clinical/non-traditional people with useful knowledge and expertise to share, and people who hold multiple perspectives across these who can help bridge these diverse perspectives.

Types of Contributions

EmergeWiki is here to facilitate the deep synthesis of primary sources into actionable recommendations that scale globally and facilitate good outcomes related to Emergent Phenomena in clinical settings, public health contexts, as well as in the field, meaning in diverse ceremonies and traditional practice contexts, on retreats, in families and communities, and globally. Primary sources may include, but are not limited to:

• ancient, medieval, modern, and contemporary texts and other media from a wide range of traditions, either in full or in summary
• hybrid texts and other media that span, synthesize, and expand upon older sources
• clinical and scientific sources from those traditions, including articles, theses, dissertations, policies, protocols, guidelines, standards of care, preliminary results, ongoing projects, open source data, roadmaps for systems improvement, etc.

References and Citations

It is essential that we properly document our information sources. As this platform is built on MediaWiki, the same platform that powers Wikipedia, and given the general familiarity with these formats, we will generally follow the standard reference and citation guidelines from Wikipedia.

Epistemology and Evidence Quality

Epistemology is the study and consideration of how we know what we think or feel we know. Different groups and individuals may have diverse and sometimes contradictory understandings of what forms the basis of statements about how things truly are (see Ontology below).

In the case of EmergeWiki, the goal is to understand and work with and across the various cultural understandings of how we know things to promote therapeutic alliances and improved outcomes. In this case, the specific goal is to help the everyone relating to Emergent Phenomena to have information presented in a style and language and based on evidence that they will find informative and to understand the source of that knowledge so that they can filter that through their own Epistemology.

It is also essential that we provide clear information on the Level of Evidence of any in formation regarding the specifics of what is considered normal and abnormal in the various traditions, as well as for any clinical or policy recommendations found here. Evidence quality and how it applies to both contemporary and evolving clinical practice and public policy is a complex topic.

Similarly complex is the topic of exactly how to weigh and categorize various types of evidence we have available from various Emergent Traditions, some of which have been evolving and iterating on their systems for thousands and maybe tens of thousands of years with a wide range of epistemic standards and methods. We will need to refine and develop Approaches to Traditional Evidence.

We also face a new and rapidly evolving question in how to weight and categorize the recommendations of various LLM/AI platforms, which may aggregate and synthesize vast amounts of information of variable quality, with, on the one hand, possible "hallucinations" and errors, yet, on the other hand, profound insights based on amounts of information that ordinary humans might find beyond their capacity to learn and remember, let alone cohere. This question becomes more complex as more and more LLM/AI content is generated and publicly posted that is fed back back into the training models for next-generation models, with the EmergeWiki contributing to those models.

Ontological Certainty, Agnosticism, and Neutrality

Ontology is the study or consideration of what truly is, often concerned with the fundamental questions of the nature of reality, experience, identity, and the like, and a core consideration of philosophy, religion, spirituality, and science. Ontological considerations on EmergeWiki are primarily viewed in a pragmatic light of what helps produce therapeutic alliances, inform practitioners and experiencers in ways, and facilitate communication, interpersonal, and intrapersonal understanding in ways that promote good outcomes and scale globally into mainstream settings in a way that adds demonstrable value.

Considerations of how to skillfully handle issues of Ontology are essential to the EmergeWiki project, and this must be done with great care.

Ontological Certainty

Ontological Certainty is a common feature of most religious, spiritual, cultural, scientific, and related emergent traditions. Noetic Experiences, those which induce a compelling sense of veracity in the experiencer, both of bare phenomenology as well as interpretation, are commonly reported as an aspect of Emergent Phenomena, and this is reflected in thousands of years of traditions claiming the supremacy of their diverse ontological doctrines. For traditions who propound or adhere to Ontological Certainty, it is important that they be labeled and described as having this feature, as that knowledge may be very useful in for intrapersonal understanding and cultural competence as the basis of building therapeutic alliances and promoting good outcomes.

Guideline: Sections of EmergeWiki that are specifically about the details of traditions that maintain aspects of Ontological Certainty may and should be presented as such, with their full internal arguments, worldviews, ontologies, and certainties being made clear to help facilitate a respectful and authentic representation of these traditions.

This is in keeping with guidelines and recommendations that understanding traditions as they are and as they think of themselves is vital for informing support and care, such as this from the DSM-5TR, page 366:

“Culture-Related Diagnostic issues Many differences between cultural contexts may influence psychological factors and their effects on medical conditions, such as those in language and communication style, idioms of distress, explanatory models of illness, patterns of seeking health care, service availability and organization, doctor-patient relationships and other healing practices, family and gender roles, and attitudes toward pain and death. Psychological factors affecting other medical conditions must be differentiated from culturally specific coping behaviors such as accessing faith, spiritual, or traditional healers or other variations in illness management that are acceptable within cultural contexts and represent an attempt to help heal the medical condition. These local practices may complement rather than obstruct evidence-based interventions. Use of alternative healing practices may delay use of medical services and affect outcomes, but when the intent of the healing practice is to address the problem in a culturally sanctioned way, these practices should not be pathologized as psychological factors affecting other medical conditions.”

Ontological Agnosticism

Ontological Agnosticism is the notion that we cannot know for certain what the underlying truths actually are, as there is insufficient evidence to justify absolute certainty one way or the other, so this is closely related to considerations of Epistemology and fundamental inadequacies therein. While there is some nuanced diversity in the varieties and underlying logics of Agnosticism both in terms of the reasons for the doubt as well as what there is doubt about, the basic essence of it containing essential aspects of ontological uncertainty remains. Its roots are ancient and its contemporary variants are many, contributing strongly to movements and cultural phenomena such as Postmodernism.

Ontological agnosticism has the disadvantage lacking the reassuring sense of felt certainty and known truth, with both the internal and social benefits that may provide. It has the advantage of potentially being more open, curious, flexible, and culturally accepting, potentially contributing to the demonstration of openness, acceptance, and interest that can allow for the establishing of trust in healing contexts, for example and specifically.

Nearly everyone has their favorite ontological positions and frames, and very few people to perhaps no people are truly and entirely ontologically agnostic either philosophically or functionally in how they operationalize their internal concepts in their day-to-day lives and interactions.

Guideline: It is extremely important that contributors who contribute outside of the presentation of traditions with Ontological Certainty are aware of their own ontological biases, preferences, and certainties and how these may impact other aspects of the EmergeWiki, specifically sections designed for global clinical recommendations to be recommended for inclusion in the curriculum of board certification of the various specialties, inclusions in standards of care, national policy guidelines, medical textbooks, etc. In these, we strongly recommend Ontological Agnosticism, or at least Ontological Neutrality.

Put another way, EmergeWiki is not a place for what we call the Ontology Wars, those seemingly perennial battles for that which is not Perennial

Ontological Neutrality

Ontological Neutrality is similar to Ontological Agnosticism but different, as it doesn't necessarily take a position on whether or not Ontological statements can or cannot be proven or substantively argued for or against on whatever epistemic grounds. It instead is an adoption of the meta-position on positions in general that one personally need not necessarily choose a side either for or against Ontological Certainty or Ontological Agnosticism, and/or that others need not necessarily chose a side regarding questions of Ontological Certainty or Ontological Agnosticism. So, depending on the direction the neutrality is pointed in, towards one's self, towards others, or both, Ontological Neutrality may have permutations of flexibility that the previous categories do not.

Ontological Pragmatism

Ontological Pragmatism is obviously a somewhat oxymoronic term, in that Ontology is the consideration of what is, and Pragmatism is the consideration of what works regardless of whether the models used to accomplish this are necessarily "true" in the strict ontological sense. So, Ontological Pragmatism is concerned with functional outcomes, meaning which ontologies work. In ordinary life, regardless of what people say they believe, they often shift between ontological frames for functional reasons on a regular basis, such as reducing humans to numbers and averages during a budget meeting, and then reducing humans to units that are subject to rules, risks, roles, and power dynamics at an Human Resources meeting, for example. On a more positive note, one might ontologically view humans as all part of the "Great Whole" at one moment, then as "Unique Points of Light" as another.

However, variants of ontological pragmatism may be demonstrated functionally even in those with powerful ontological views that would seem, at least superficially, impractical, such as Illusionist theories of consciousness, in which consciousness is taken to be purely illusory, and yet which still, to all practical appearances, allowed for the successful modeling and navigation of this purported illusion by its ontological adherents. This is related to the concept of Ontological Internal Diversity.

Ontological Internal Diversity

Ontological Internal Diversity is the notion that individuals may have a range of ontological modes that they shift between in their internal and external lives depending on the situation, how they are asked about their beliefs, recent conditioning, etc. These views may seem contradictory, paradoxical, inconsistent, and sometimes arbitrary, at least superficially. For example, as in the example above, one might be an Illusionist when asked what one believed but functionally a Materialist when dealing with a chemistry experiment and even then describe reality in what would seem Materialist terms. Examples such as, "Trust in Allah, but tie your camel," represent this basic sort of practical application of ontological internal diversity, in this case representing two apparent ontological frames of how reality works and what it is.

Clinical Ontological Pragmatism

One critical set of variants of Ontological Pragmatism for EmergeWiki purposes is the notion of Clinical Ontological Pragmatism, which comes in a few major varieties.

1. Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism

Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism is the notion that there is a particular ontological position that is optimal for all clinical situations and should be used globally as the standard for what people should believe, with direct implications for questions not just about what is reality, but then what is sanity vs what is delusion or mental illness, as well as what is considered acceptable or not in a particular social setting. Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism is often functionally indistinguishable from Ontological Certainty, meaning that one argues for the adoption of a belief both because it is felt to be both true and useful.

Examples of Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism might be the notion that Materialism is always the correct or optimal frame, as is commonly found in clinical and scientific settings today, or perhaps the Biopsychosocial Model, which blends a mix of Materialist, psychological, and social considerations in various ways. However, since at least the beginning of the 20th century, there have been advocates for models such as Cosmic Consciousness and its related variants as the optimal ontological model for clinical settings, as articulated initially by those such as Richard Maurice Bucke, and continued on in the contemporary tradition of Transpersonal Psychology, for example. Another popular example is Mind-Body Dualism, aka Cartesian Dualism, the notion that there is a body and there is a soul or spirit, each of which have their own considerations but which are somehow related and may impact each other, so really a Mind-Body Semi-Dualism, a view that is popular in clinical settings with strong religious traditions, including but not limited to countries influenced by the Abrahamic Religions.

Numerous complex tensions arise in clinical settings and the supporting literature and guidelines around questions of Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism, particularly when based on Ontological Certainty. Fixed Clinical Ontological Pragmatism may have certain advantages in certain contexts where shared beliefs are taken as givens on all sides, thus creating a sense of social and paradigmatic cohesion with the obvious benefits that may arise from that.

It may also yield problems if the fixed ontological frames are insufficient for the experiences and situations being experienced. Examples of this include those advocating for Cosmic Consciousness over Materialism stating that it would provide vastly better and more coherent explanations of Emergent Phenomena, such as psi phenomena, than would Materialism, and, conversely, those advocating for Materialism arguing that notions of biochemical and physical determinism are clearly vastly more rationally acceptable and better supported by reproducible scientific evidence than notions of, say, psi phenomena. Mind-Body Dualism accepts neither Cosmic Consciousness nor Materialism as true, believing that the world of the spirit or soul and the world of the body go by their own laws, believing themselves to thus be superior to and transcending the debates and issues proposed by both the Materialists and the Consciousness Consciousness advocates. In teach of these examples, we find a certainty that a particular Fixed Ontology is not only true but also optimally useful in all situations.

Regardless of which of these may or not be true or most useful, depending on your epistemic and cultural frames, the general point is that there is hot and consequential debate regarding the optimal Fixed Clinical Ontology with profound consequences for living humans in clinical, scientific, public health, and social settings, and so these must be strongly and skillfully taken into account in the work of EmergeWiki, whose first goal is not to sort out questions of ontology, but, instead to promote good outcomes.

2. Agnostic Clinical Ontological Pragmatism

Agnostic Clinical Ontological Pragmatism is the notion that, since we cannot know what is truly true, we then are faced purely with questions of pragmatism, and, to some degree, aesthetics, meaning what works, meaning advances the goals of people set of individuals with particular aesthetic considerations when dealing with a specific situation in that cultural and functional context. While obviously allowing for a great deal of potential flexibility, strict ontological agnosticism does also have the risk of looking down on any Ontological Certainty and related beliefs, cultures, and individuals adhering to these as being on intrinsically epistemically shaky grounds, thus leading potentially to some of the barriers to developing trust and therapeutic relationships, among other issues.