The Ethics of Risk, A Transdisciplinary-Semiotic Lens

SPoR is pleased to announce the launch of our latest book: The Ethics of Risk, A Transdisciplinary-Semiotic Lens written by Andrew Larsen and Rob Long. This is book seventeen in the series presenting the Social Psychology of Risk. (Now with over 1.5 million downloads).

The Ethics of Risk must be anchored to the experience of life and living, not to the idea that everything must be ‘safe’. The purpose of life is not to be safe but to learn to live in risk, sustain life and enjoy the blessings of fallibility.

When we learn to live in community with others, we enter into moral knowing as experienced in dialectical relationship. We live in Socialitie (social meaning and being) and so, what we decide and do always has a moral outcome and purpose. We cannot move in life without risk. Risk is not the enemy of life but rather its condition. All risk carries with it a challenge in ethics.

This is a book that explores the problems of the risk and safety industry anchored to a deontological ethic. This is an ethic that supposes that humans can be impartial and objective about the nature of risk. The risk and safety industry are locked into a worldview that adores Deontology, Behaviourism, Engineering, Positivism and Scientism (D/BEPS). This worldview drives the risk and safety industry

to the naive belief in ‘cardinal’ rules, ‘common-sense’, duty and objective reason. We often see this expressed as ‘do the right thing’. The trajectory of this naïve view however, results in a dehumanising ethic that places objects over subjects, regulation over relationships and power over presence.

The ethics proposed by this book is informed by a different approach, anchored to an Existentialist-Phenomenological worldview. This worldview is focused to persons, care, helping, community and relationships. This methodology is the foundation for a Social Psychology of Risk (SPoR). This worldview leads to an ethic that values subjects over objects, persons over performance and meaning over systems. It requires a methodology and method that escapes the confines of compliance to regulations, mindless duty and advocates for an eclectic-dialectic founded on an embodied and experiential approach to decision making.

In an eclectic-dialectic, all values are understood to be in competition with each other depending on context (Socialitie). Rather than anchor to the absolute ‘cardinal’ rule, an eclectic-dialectic embraces the ‘road less travelled’ in experience, being and living as if persons matter. In this ethic, the moral meaning and ethic of living is not directed by safety but by how one lives with risk. This ethic is directed by an understanding of personhood, Socialitie and community.

The Ethics of Risk proposed in this book offer possibilities, openness, positive engagement and learning. In this ethic, there is little anxiety about not knowing nor fear of uncertainty. This is why knowing is framed as a Transdisciplinary-Semiotic. Indeed, if we move away from the naive promises of deontology, duty and certainty, we discover a new way of engaging with others in risk that enlivens one to a freedom to be in Socialitie. This is the freedom of the dance, the movement of learning and a new way of understanding risk. This is not a freedom of open licence but rather a freedom discovered in the faith-love-hope-justice dialectic.

Once we have embraced a new orientation in ethics through the discourse of this book, we are not left ‘high and dry’. This book provides both a methodology and positive methods to enact a humanising approach to risk. These methods are practical and easily useable so that an eclectic-dialectic can be realised in day-to-day engagement of risk.

You can download your free copy here:

The Ethics of Risk

You can watch Andy and Rob launch their book here in a 10 minute video: