The following links and resources can help you get started in understanding Enactivism and Risk. All places in the upcoming workshops with Prof. Long are full and registrations are closed.

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One of the best and easiest videos that explains enactivism is here: https://youtu.be/HW0JnjgCO3o?si=sTZVWKAo0-TeLwLc

It is only a 14-minute video, but covers off many of the essentials in understanding human being in the world and how the world, others, relationships and our own internal decision making systems (nervous, endocrine, respiratory, integumentary (skin), muscular, digestive, cardiovascular, reproductive, cellular, urinary, feeling/emotional and skeletal systems) drive behaviour.

In order to understand enactivism and risk there are a few new terms that need to be learned and lots of brain-centrism to be unlearned. These are:

Affordances: are the properties of things and how we interact with them. Eg. we learn then work automatically with most objects in our lives. We know how to pick up a cup and drink from it, we learned this at about the age of 3-4 years of age. We know how to use a chair, open a door and climb a ladder without thinking. Learning how to interact with the world and its design, is called affordance. There is a good introductory video here:

https://youtu.be/QCSXEKHL6fc?si=hsJubCRx661xEgTM

You can read about affordances here: https://oecs.mit.edu/pub/984ungzu/

Autopoeisis: is about the automatic reproductive capability of an ecological being and thing. The work means self-creation. We know this as humans through the process of reproduction but even down to the smallest cell in a plant or any being, they self-reproduce. A good introduction video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TiuLcc9Tvw

OF course, we know that AI and computers neither have consciousness nor autopoiesis, which is why it is called ‘artificial’. AI is neither biological or ecological and will never self-reproduce (https://youtu.be/e9484gNpFF8?si=NoMqUFo2glhd5mpZ). You can research autopoiesis here: https://www.mannaz.com/en/articles/coaching-assessment/understanding-autopoiesis-life-systems-and-self-organization/

Allostasis: This is the drive, energy and disposition to sustain life. All ecological and biological life self-regulates and has ‘built in’ systems to automatically preserve life. This is of course, a contradiction to the Bradley Curve that assumes that humans have a natural instinct to self-harm, which is nonsense (https://safetyrisk.net/the-false-claims-of-the-bradley-curve/). This doesn’t seem to bother Safety, that loves models that don’t make sense eg. Reason’s swiss-cheese. And, so you will see all over the safety industry, the silly Bradley Curve (https://safetyrisk.net/the-dangerous-and-harmful-bradley-curve/) that assumes humans self-harm. You can see a good video on Allostasis here: https://youtu.be/UtYkmdEeKNo?si=XG0NjGbUvQ9j8q4D

If you want to understand psychosocial harm, stress, distress and trauma (https://youtu.be/IMsAmWA7so0?si=BS-CtmPNobg9zNoX), understanding allostasis is critical (https://safetyrisk.net/holistic-responses-to-psychosocial-harm-free-workshops-on-enactivism-and-risk/).

Unlearning Brain-Centrism

One of the most important steps to understanding why people do as they do is unlearning the nonsense model of brain-centrism. The brain is NOT a directing organ but rather a receiving and mediating organ.

So, ditch all those brain-centric semiotics and myths, because this is not how humans make decisions (https://youtu.be/6WN8RG1AHTA?si=h38g1bVTMbSrfE1F). Sorry HOP, the brain in a pot plant is not a model of learning. Put a brain in a hard hat as an image to understand decision making is misleading and dangerous. Most decision making (95%) is NOT rational but is rather heuristical, automatic and emotional (https://youtu.be/bAmYUiHAQwk?si=zTLLKfLvp8Ho_sKQ)

Further read here:

• Nielsen (2023) Embodied, Embedded, and Enactive Psychopathology, Reimaging Mental Disorder.
• Fuchs (2018) Ecology of the Brain. The Phenomenology and Biology of the Embodied Mind.
• Colombetti (2014) The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind.

The human is an Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended being (https://youtu.be/-wFV_0_w-vw?si=FlLnN15aWr_6Fv-o). A good model to understand this uses the example of music and how music works in an Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended way:

This model comes from Nielsen.

Humans are inter-affected, inter-corporeal, inter-subjective and inter-connected. We are not a computer carried around on a body but rather a fully integrated being where all bodily systems: engage each other, engage and resonate with others (through mirror and canonical neurons) and are highly influenced by the world, including its affordances, allostasis and autopoiesis.

When we understand ecological being (https://youtu.be/Az0k8VNjNRk?si=22bR-8YiXQEMhCbr) , we move away from Descartes Error (Damasio – https://monoskop.org/images/5/5b/Damasio_Antonio_R_Descartes_Error_Emotion_Reason_and_the_Human_Brain.pdf) that there is a separation between the body and the mind.

There is no such separation and seeking to address risk and safety through a dis-embodied model of cognition, common to Safety, simply won’t work.

This is why in SPoR, we have developed a methodology and methods that don’t work like common safety systems or paradigms. And, this is why SPoR methods work (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety-book-for-free-download/).

If Safety continues with the same dis-embodied worldview and paradigm, it will never be able to innovate or create anything new.