What PentOme is proposing
Being Human brings the enquiry back to the whole person within a wider world: embodied, relational, meaning-making and changing. Shared principles can illuminate experience while the individual remains more than any model.
Patterns we can observe
Humans are biological organisms embedded in environments and social worlds. Body regulation, perception and action are inseparable from the conditions in which life is lived.
Nature can illuminate embodiment and interdependence, but biological explanation alone does not exhaust culture, meaning, identity or subjective experience.
How this can appear in life
Identity is shaped through memory, body, relationships, roles, groups, language and imagined futures. Belonging can provide meaning, support and efficacy, while isolation can affect wellbeing.
Human beings also live with uncertainty and contradiction. A useful model needs enough structure to help without pretending that complexity has disappeared.
Ways humans have made sense of it
People inherit languages, stories, customs, symbols and institutions that shape what can be thought, valued and communicated. Culture is therefore context, not decoration around an otherwise isolated individual.
Different cultures can organise selfhood, contradiction, relationship and change differently. PentOme should remain open to those differences.
Neighbouring knowledge
Embodiment; social identity; belonging; narrative identity; meaning-making; culture; uncertainty; social connection.
What evidence can support
Reviews of social identity describe meaningful group memberships as potential sources of connection, meaning, purpose, support and efficacy.
Interoception research also links bodily processing with affective experience and aspects of the sense of self. Together these literatures support a view of human experience as embodied and relational, without reducing personhood to either domain.
Questions, interpretation & scope
Being Human is deliberately broad. No short evidence list can establish a complete theory of personhood. PentOme should use research to support particular claims and leave philosophical questions visibly open.
Starting points in the evidence.
Social identity and social connection — review ↗