Ontological Intelligence may be described as the ability to recognize one's currently adopted identity and the reasons for its adoption, and the changes of identity that occur reactively or proactively in new circumstances, and the identities of the organizations of which one is a member; plus the willingness to transcend any egotistical barriers to effective listening, learning and reconsideration of identity issues.
Ontological intelligence precedes and is more fundamental that epistemological intelligence, as it is the being of the human being. It is the foundation for the individual's assumed roles in life, and as ontological intelligence develops, new boundariess and paradigms become available for the expansion of knowledge and skills, and expression of epistemological intelligence. Acknowledging the importance of an ontological framework for education shifts its primary intention and attention from knowing to being.
Because of limits in human mental capacity, the mind cannot cope directly with the complexity of the world. Rather, we construct a simplified mental model of reality - within a bounded or limited rationality - and then work with this model. We may behave rationally within the confines of our mental model, but this model is not always well adapted to the requirements of the real world, and does not enable us to understand what is truly going on.